Being a Mid Level Dev

As of last week I am now supposedly a mid-level dev, rather than a junior one. It’s weird in a sense because it has reinforced how arbitrary the distinction is - I am clearly exactly the same human being as I was when I was a junior. If anything I feel more junior now, because I’m working with a whole new tech stack, and I don’t know how any of it works, so I’m asking far more questions than I did as I was leaving my old role. The other big change is that now I need to have opinions about things. Previously, somebody more senior would say “we need so and so done” and I’d go “cool, what’s the best way to do so and so?” and they’d tell me, and I’d do it. But now, somebody more senior than me keeps saying “how do you thing we should do so and so?”, which feels very unfamiliar. I don’t have any confidence in my opinions yet, and don’t feel qualified to give them, so right now I am very much faking-it-til-I-hopefully-make-it, crossing my fingers that nobody notices my opinions are shallow at best.

I’m sure there’ll be more thoughts on this as I settle into the job more, and my confidence in my own opinions inevitably dwindles even further.