When can you start calling yourself "Senior"?

Hi everyone :wave: I’ve been working as a TA in the industry for 4 years now ( + 2y as 3D artist), doing various things from tools, to FX, to rigging and animation stuff.
I’ve recently started getting contacted by recruiters looking for Senior TAs, so questions sparked in my mind: What does it take to be a senior? Is it experience?, skills? Leadership attitude? How could I be considered one?
:slightly_smiling_face:
What do you think?

Every company has it’s own way of slicing this up, so it often involves a bit of translation. If you know how many title tiers a given company uses it’s often easier to do the translation – when you talk to a recruiter if you say “we use a 5-tier system, and a I’m currently a 3” they can slot in the form of words that they expect.

This is an example from software of how titles and experience levels do and don’t line up across major companies:

You’ll note that “senior” is roughly “mid career” – somebody who’s a seasoned pro, not a target for sustained mentorship.

To the hiring manager, “senior” usually means you’ve passed out of the realm of handholding or playing second chair: You’re given independent responsibilities and expected to deliver them with minimal oversight. Wwhoever is assigning you work can give you a set of goals and trust you to make them work. The work products would be feature or system level stuff with a lot of moving parts: I can trust a junior to make a dialog box or a single tool, but only a senior could do a complete rigging system or a new exporter on their own.

4 Likes

I couldn’t have hoped for a better answer! Thank you very much :pray:

For us a Senior is able to work with zero input from a Lead. He can work weeks without any input. If someting is finished he finds ne next Task. No guiding needed.

In production this does not happen but he “could” work without any help or guiding.

4 Likes

… more from slack…

1 Like