Comment by necovek

There is no denying practice is needed, but... I've been doing this (getting to reduce ambiguity and simplify complex problems) since before my first job in free software communities, yet really, I wasn't anywhere close to "senior" when I joined my first job at a demanding SW organization at 22 years old.

There was simply a lot I did not know, but I had the talent to do this part well (sure, one can argue that I had "practice" doing this with any problem since I was ~10 years old, but calling that "senior" would be... over the top: I think it rather qualifies as "talent").

It took me a couple of years of learning good software engineering from my wonderful and smart senior colleagues and through my own failures and successes for me to become a Tech Lead too.