Senior by Role, Junior at Heart
Why Great Senior Software Engineers Never Stop Being Juniors
The hardest challenge about becoming a Senior Software Engineer is staying a Junior your entire life.
As we progress in our software engineering careers, we often start as juniors full of curiosity and a hunger for learning. However, something interesting happens as we advance in our career path and become senior engineers: we lose touch with the qualities that made us thrive when we were just starting. I observed this phenomenon many times in the last few years.
Why do we tend to move away from the essential qualities we had as juniors once we become seniors? What are these qualities, and why should we bring back that eager, learning mindset? That’s what we are going to see together in this article.
Note: While I've talked about the typical mindset of enthusiastic and passionate junior software engineers, it's important to mention that everyone's journey is unique. So, keep in mind that what I've shared is just one perspective among others, and is based on my own experience.
The Junior Mindset
Junior Software Engineers are usually aware that they have to make a lot of extra effort to evolve. When we just started our professional careers, everything was new to us, so we had a lot to explore and plenty of room to grow. All these factors lead juniors to:
Love Learning
They enjoy learning new things. The tech world is big and always changing, and juniors like the challenge of absorbing as much knowledge as they can. This love for learning becomes one of the main driving forces behind their professional growth.
Ask for Help
They generally understand that they lack knowledge and see senior software engineers as people who can help them move forward. Peering with seniors also helps to develop their knowledge and gain some experience. They understand and recognize that getting advice from others who've been there before helps them learn faster and avoid mistakes.
Love Challenges
They often see difficult tasks as chances to get better, not problems to avoid. They know that dealing with challenging tasks helps them gain experience, and it's a necessary step to evolve. The excitement of overcoming these challenges is incredibly motivating for them and is seen as a reward for our work.
Ask for Feedback
They value feedback and actively looking for advice to improve their soft and hard skills. Feedback shows them what they are good at and most importantly where they can improve.
Be Humble
Knowing that there are always more experienced software engineers around them keeps them humble. They face this reality every day, and it reminds them to stay open to learning from those with more experience.
Adopt Teamwork
Collaboration is second nature to juniors. They recognize that combining efforts with team members not only leads to better outcomes but also provides a valuable opportunity to learn from diverse perspectives.
Think Outside the Box
Juniors are often creative problem-solvers. They look at problems in new ways, and this creativity comes from not being too stuck in the usual ways of doing things. It’s one of the rare advantages of not having enough experience in a field: we have a new perspective on problems to solve.
Why Do We Lose Them?
Many reasons can explain it:
As we get more experienced, we might get too comfortable and not want to get out of our comfort zone
We might focus too much on what we already know: we stop actively seeking new things to learn, focusing on our expertise
We might feel vulnerable, fearing that not knowing something or seeking help might undermine our senior status
We might find ourselves working on tasks with fewer tough problems. Without challenges, the excitement to learn decreases
We might take the senior title as a goal and once achieved, we put less effort into further personal evolution
Back to Basics
Being a senior is not only about solving complex problems, mentoring others, contributing outside our team's scope, etc. These are new responsibilities and expectations, but we throw away everything that made us successful as juniors. Returning to the fundamental principles that characterized our early career is crucial for a successful journey as a senior software engineer.
Wrap Up
Balancing the wisdom of a senior with the eagerness of a junior is the key to a fulfilling and evolving software engineering career. Keeping the fundamentals that made us thrive in the beginning while adopting the new requirements of the senior role are both important to succeed in the long run.