What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming a Senior Dev
The first time I was handed the title “Senior Developer,” I thought I’d made it. I imagined I’d be wielding some invisible sword of technical truth, solving hard problems and mentoring junior devs like a wise old monk in a mountain-top dojo — deploying prod-ready code with a calm nod and a cup of black coffee in hand.
The reality was... not exactly that.
No one handed me a sword. Or a manual. Or even a “Congrats.” I updated my LinkedIn, refreshed my email inbox twice, and then went back to figuring out why a div wasn’t aligning properly in IE11.
It turns out, being a senior dev wasn’t just about writing better code. It was about becoming a better listener, teacher, negotiator, and sometimes — unfortunately — the bearer of bad news in a sprint planning meeting.
My first big mistake
A few weeks into my new title, I decided to refactor a chunk of legacy code that was bothering me. You know the kind: a fragile, tentacled function passed down from the ancients, doing five things it shouldn’t and barely working. I stayed late a few nights, rewrote it with modern patterns, added tests, even optimized a few queries.
I was proud of it.
Then I deployed it.
And I broke three unrelated features.
Worse, it turned out some of those weird conditionals were intentionally there — edge-case handling for international users that no one documented.
That was the day I learned that context > cleverness. That was also the day I added “check with the product owner before touching business logic” to my internal checklist.
It’s not about you anymore
Another thing I wish I knew: as a senior dev, you write less code, but you cause a bigger impact — for better or worse.
Sometimes that means jumping into someone else’s pull request not to change it, but to not change it. To ask why. To understand. To encourage. To unblock. Your job shifts from "how fast can I write this" to "how can I help the team move faster — together?"
I used to think being senior meant being the best developer in the room. Now I know it means making everyone else feel like they are.
Juniors watch everything
Early on, a junior on our team asked if I had a minute. I said, “Sure — just ping me after lunch.” They didn’t. I forgot.
Two weeks later, I found out they’d struggled silently with a feature I’d written, unsure how to extend it, too intimidated to ask again.
I felt awful. That was a pivotal moment. I started setting up recurring 1:1s. I made a rule to never reschedule a pairing session unless someone was bleeding (physically or in production). And I made it clear that “dumb questions” were not only welcome — they were vital.
Turns out, how you act as a senior matters more than what you say. You don’t lead by title. You lead by showing up consistently and being kind when it’s easier not to be.
Senior doesn't mean “done”
There was a brief time I felt stuck. Not learning fast enough. Not shipping cool stuff. Mostly helping unblock others and dealing with sprint admin. It made me question if this was it — just babysitting tickets and “aligning stakeholders.”
But here’s the truth: you have to redefine what growth means. As a junior, growth is adding skills. As a senior, growth is adding value — and that can mean mentoring, cross-functional collaboration, refactoring a messy process, not just code.
Eventually, I found joy again. I started giving lightning talks. Wrote better docs. Reviewed interviews. Helped shape architecture decisions. It wasn’t as flashy as discovering React, but it felt... solid. Like I was building foundations, not just features.
What I wish I knew?
That seniority isn’t a destination.
It’s a responsibility.
And the most senior people I’ve met? They’re humble, curious, and still learning — just like they were on day one.
So if you’re eyeing that senior title, or you’ve just stepped into the role: take your time. Ask questions. Help others. Keep your ego in check. And above all, stay human.
Because no one remembers the perfect code you wrote.
They remember how you made the team feel.
👨💻✨