In tech, depending on a company, there are various seniority levels engineers have. When faced with a new ladder, I first see if I can apply the following model:
- Junior - requires a lead engineer/manager to tell
- what task and how to do it. And then repeats independently;
- Middle - requires a lead engineer/manager to tell
- only what to do, and is independent in finding how;
- Senior - requires a lead engineer/manager to tell
- when to deliver scope of work, independently finding out the answers to ‘what? how?’
- Staff and above is not expected to have anyone guiding them, and they
- detect the problems/challenges/risks themselves and prioritize for work depending on the priorities aligned with a manager. One type of such a challenge is helping to unblock other engineers time in order to deliver the scope.
flowchart TD J["Junior<br/>told <b>what</b> + <b>how</b>"] --> M["Middle<br/>told <b>what</b>, finds <b>how</b>"] M --> S["Senior<br/>told <b>when</b>, finds <b>what</b> + <b>how</b>"] S --> St["Staff and above<br/><b>detects</b> problems, prioritizes with manager"]
The titles can differ across companies and might be either be of a lower or a higher number. The above is for demonstration purposes, and should be considered as a imaginable ladder.
On this topic I could recommend the website and the respective book, to the ideas of which I can agree or not.