It's useful to consider developer maturity in terms of the maximum project complexity they can handle: A junior developer can effectively build a software solu

It's useful to consider developer maturity in terms of the maximum project complexity they can handle: A junior developer can effectively build a software solution to something, given some advice about the interfaces and algorithms to be used. A senior developer just needs a high level description of the desired technical solution. They can be trusted to instrument, refactor, collaborate, rewrite, invent, and get the problem solved. A lead developer can be given bigger problems and organize an entire team of developers to tackle it. This line of reasoning still works if you keep going: A product manager can be given a metric to improve or a customer to satisfy. No further direction is required. They can be relied upon to do research, come up with a plan, hire staff (technical and nontechnical) and organize it all. All CEOs have the same problem to solve: "Grow the business."