Being a Mid Level Dev II

It’s not been dangerously close to a month of not being a “junior” anymore. There has been a lot of faking it ‘til I make it, but at least it doesn’t seem like anyone has caught on yet. I’m still not used to having opinions on things and voicing those opinions, but so far whenever I do, they’ve been well received - hopefully this isn’t purely out of the politness of my colleagues.

I passed another big milestone on my mid-level dev journey today; that of code reviewing someone else’s code. I’ve had my own code checked for quality by others plenty of times, and am familiar with receiving feedback and acting on it before said code gets the seal of approval to be merged into production, but being the one to give that approval for someone else’s work was a new and slightly terrifying part of the job. It adds a new layer of responsibility that I haven’t had before; if I sign off on something and it isn’t up to standard, or worse breaks in a live environment, it’s at least partially on me. I’m obviously afraid of making a mistake, but on the other hand, it feels good to have more ownership of the project as a whole.

Faking it ‘til I make it seems to be working well so far, and a lot of the conventional wisdom in the industry seems to be that it’s the optimal strategy for success. I guess I’m going to stick at it.