Being the only junior on a team of all seniors is lonelier than I expected
Six seniors, then me. Everyone around me has 8+ years in, and most days that's genuinely great — I'm surrounded by people who know things. But there's a specific kind of isolation nobody mentioned when I took the role.
There's no one at my level. No peer to turn to and go "wait, you were confused by that too?" When I don't understand something, I can't tell if it's a normal gap or a me-being-slow gap, because I've got no baseline to measure against. The seniors are kind about it, but they cleared this stuff so long ago that a lot of it is invisible to them now.
If you've been the lone junior on a senior-heavy team, what got you through the stretch before you found people at your level? I think I mostly miss having someone to be confused alongside.
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AnonymousAnon The "is this a normal gap or a me gap" thing is so real. One senior eventually just told me: assume it's a normal gap unless proven otherwise, because everyone forgets how confusing this stuff was. Changed how freely I asked questions.
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AnonymousAnon Been there. What helped me was finding peers outside my team — a couple of other juniors in a Slack community I could DM the "is this normal?" questions to without feeling like I was slowing my seniors down. Took a ton of pressure off my actual team relationships.