Well, I admit the remark was off the cuff because I was thinking of conventional waterfall development cycles in the aerospace industry.... in that context someone who wasn't there during an entire development cycle is not even a junior member, but is rather a recruit under training to begin actually contributing to the next project.
I would call someone who survived all phases of a single design-code-test-peerreview cycle (about 2 years) to be junior, and someone with less experience that that as a recruit. On that basis, the lead should have 3 design cycles or 6 years experience. The lead does not need to be the master designer on the project, but it helps a lot when that happens. The Eternal Squire -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
