Code Reading: The Fastest Path to a Senior Salary
January 29, 2026
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Senior developers earn nearly twice as much as juniors, and I believe this gap will continue to widen. AI is turning code into a commodity. What matters is no longer writing code. What matters is understanding code.
What sets seniors apart? They see a problem and immediately know how to solve it. Not because they're smarter, but because they've seen that problem a hundred times in different forms.
But there's a faster way than waiting for years.
The Way Is Called "Code Reading"
Hannes Lowette, software developer and speaker, put it like this: "In university we learn to write code. But later in our careers, we spend far more time reading code than writing it. And we don't actually train for that."
That's exactly where the opportunity lies. Not tutorials, not documentation—real, working code from developers whose thinking you want to understand.
Why does this work? Tutorials show you what's possible. Code reading shows you what's sensible. You don't learn syntax—you learn mental models. And these mental models are exactly what AI can't replace.
How to Build It Into Your Routine
Every morning, before you write a single line of code, spend 15 minutes reading someone else's code. That sounds like nothing. But do the math: 15 minutes × 365 days = over 90 hours per year. That's more than two full work weeks, just from reading in the morning.
When: Mornings, before you start coding yourself. The first minutes of the day, when your mind is still fresh.
What to read: On your team, your colleagues' pull requests are perfect. Review them before they get merged, even if you're not an official reviewer. For open source, I recommend individual functions from libraries you use daily:
- Lodash's debounce — everyone uses it, but few understand how it works
- date-fns formatDistance — how do you calculate "3 days ago"?
How to read: Pick a single function, not the whole project. Ask yourself: "Why did the author solve it this way?" And take brief notes—that anchors what you've learned.
The Result
After one month, you've seen 30 different coding styles. After one year, hundreds. And when production is on fire? While others are guessing, you know: "This looks like the problem I saw in a PR last week."
At DevCraft Academy, we regularly run frontend and backend group projects. Participants build real projects in teams, practice best practices, and read plenty of each other's code. Nothing builds these mental models faster.
Your Next Step
Tomorrow morning, before you touch your first ticket, open a PR from a colleague or one of the repos above and read for 15 minutes. Just read—don't build anything.
15 minutes a day. That's the price for mental models that AI can't replace. And for which companies pay senior salaries.
Newsletter subscribers received this article on January 15, 2026. Want insights like this in your inbox every week?