Maneuvering as a Junior in a Senior world

Setting the scene

Although here at Baseflow we don't deal with the muddled tiers of seniority when it comes to development,you can't help but look up to the select few of your coworkers with decades of experience under their belt.They seemed like unicorns to me, alien creatures with vast knowledge my inexperienced brain would not be able to comprehend. So when I started my very first project with:

• A new and unknown client
• No knowledge of the business I'd be working for
• 70+ years of experience across my 4 team members

It was only natural that I felt like a loose canon.
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Software engineering is just role playing when you don't know what you're doing

So put yourself in my shoes, really let the horror sink in. Are you feeling the anxiety yet? Let's ground ourselves with a few questions that I'd like you to answer for yourself before continuing:

• What are your teammates expecting from you (What am I supposed to be doing here?)
• What is the organization as a whole expecting from you (Why am I placed here?)
• How do you want to position yourself (Who am I going to be in this project?)
• What do I want to show to the outside world (How am I going to present myself to the rest?)

Your first instinct might be to take on the role of a David Attenborough, where silent curiosity is the name of the game. Watching the behavior of the wildlife (read: seniors) around you, you'd stay silent, don't get in their way and just try and keep up with the migrating herd. Every seemingly arbitrary decision made, every approach from communication with the client to the choice of software stack just observed and never questioned, thinking that you could never replicate their years of experience with whatever might come out of your little noggin.

Maybe you'd want to prove myself, beat your chest and try and prove that you are the greatest. (This persona doesn't need a name, because you're already thinking of a person who is exactly like this) Besides this position being absolutely untenable, given that you are coming from a place of absolute inexperience and ignorance; you'll most likely also find yourself in a difficult position when it comes to team synergy. Ignorance will not be bliss and you'll stay ignorant given that this approach does not allow for the acceptance of new ideas.

These overblown personas only really address yourself; the Who and How, and don't take into account the What and Why of your being there. In a healthy organization with realistic views on what it means to lack experience your inclusion in the project is simple: You are there to learn. With the experienced developers that surrounded me, my contributions to this project could neither sink the ship, nor singlehandedly sail it to where it needed to go. My mistakes seemingly bound by invisible guardrails, forged from experience and knowledge of those around me. My mistakes didn't result in the project blowing up, and this realization set me free.

Understanding that everyone just wants me to grow and learn, I decided to take a trip down memory lane and be like I was at 5 years old: Constantly, and I mean constantly asking "Why?". Healthy enthusiasm, boldly but humbly chiming in with my own ideas on everything and asking that oh so critical three letter question allows you to tap into the experience of others. Adopting this mindset, together with a willingness to be on the receiving end of brutal code reviews will not only grow your technical skill as a developer; it will get you in touch with other aspects of software development like client communication and translating business requirements into code that actually solves a problem.
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The takeaway

As of writing this I am pushing three years of experience and no longer concern myself with where I am on the arbitrary tiers of developer job titles. They aren't life stages a developer goes through, like a pupa turning into a caterpillar and then morphing into a glorious Senior Developer uhh I mean butterfly. The answers to the questions we asked ourselves earlier will ultimately determine our attitude and position in any collaborative venture, and if we ask ourselves "Where do I want to go?", we might even be able to know what's beyond that.

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