What are some behaviours that, in your opinion, define a senior developer?

What are some traits or behaviours of a developer that scream "this person is senior!"

Comments

[Arnaud Dagnelies]

I don't think "behaviours" define a "senior" web developer. I rather think it's defined by:

• a breath of knowledge, either wide, deep or both
• broad technical and soft skills that grew with age
• having an eye for the importance of human interactions
• an attitude leaning towards the "big picture"
• lots of anecdotes of quirky forgotten stuff ;)

[Savvas Stephanides]

You're absolutely right, Arnaud. I just think of senior developer as a mindset rather than just the quantity of knowledge and experience.

[Ayyash]

I consider the ability to debug a live site using DevTools console, a sign of knowing just how chaotic javascript can be, regardless of how polished webpack make it look. the more senior one is, the more comfortable they are with console ... on the other hand, i have no idea what water coolers have to do with it :)

[Savvas Stephanides]

You're right. A senior developer is often more comfortable with their tools. But I think senior developers are more than just the code they write and how comfortable they are with tools. It's more about good communication, context switching when needing to explain things to people from different backgrounds and skill levels.