Comment by Insanity

Disagree, it's not _just_ practice. You can do something for 10,000 hours but never actively try to improve. Does that mean you're now more senior because you had more volume of practice?

e.g, let's say someone spends 10k hours doing just 'addition and subtraction' problems on 2 digit numbers. Are they now better at maths than someone who spent 0.1k hours but doing a variety of problems?

To grow as a software engineer, you need to have volume + have this be outside of your comfort zone + actively try to improve/challenge yourself.

Apart from this, I do agree it's not 'innate talent' that drives someone to become a senior engineer, and I think anyone with the right attitude / mindset can do so.