> The only thing that makes a senior are years of experience
The only thing that makes you a senior in software is whatever titles the companies you've worked for happen to give out (which may be inflated for various political or hiring reasons) while you work there and there are basically completely arbitrary criteria from company to company.
In terms of official job titles, I was a "Senior Software Engineer" like 2-3 years after I started writing code professionally, and I mention this not to toot my own horn in any way but to point out how arbitrary titles can be (and we won't even get into the debate over the 'Engineer' bit).
The only thing that makes you a senior in software is whatever titles the companies you've worked for happen to give out (which may be inflated for various political or hiring reasons) while you work there and there are basically completely arbitrary criteria from company to company.
In terms of official job titles, I was a "Senior Software Engineer" like 2-3 years after I started writing code professionally, and I mention this not to toot my own horn in any way but to point out how arbitrary titles can be (and we won't even get into the debate over the 'Engineer' bit).