I advise junior developers that there are primarily two difference between a junior and senior developer:
1) A senior developer is unafraid of not knowing things. When we join a new team or company, we're as lost as any junior developer joining them team. We ask as many questions as necessary to get our work done effectively, without shame or fear of looking foolish for not knowing things already. We are good at searching through unfamiliar codebases to figure out how they work.
2) A senior developer (or any productive person) is good at saying no. People will ask for more of your time than you can spare. You can gently but firmly say no, direct people elsewhere (delegate), or ask people to discuss with your manager whether more of your time can be allocated to help them.
I would argue willingness to say no is what separates junior from senior.
In my experience it actually leads to Juniors being abused a lot of times being given dumb projects someone should have said no to. Then code review rolls around and the seniors are like “what is this” and there’s a dumb fight. Lol. Maybe that’s just the places I’ve worked.
I don't think you're the only one who has experienced this; we hired a couple of new grad programmers recently and they've really been put through the ringer. Not necessarily on dumb projects, but projects that one might categorize as urgent but not important.
Your first point is something I've seen a lot of and experienced myself too when I was new. I think it can be a big psychological barrier to learning more and generally being happier/more confident.
1) A senior developer is unafraid of not knowing things. When we join a new team or company, we're as lost as any junior developer joining them team. We ask as many questions as necessary to get our work done effectively, without shame or fear of looking foolish for not knowing things already. We are good at searching through unfamiliar codebases to figure out how they work.
2) A senior developer (or any productive person) is good at saying no. People will ask for more of your time than you can spare. You can gently but firmly say no, direct people elsewhere (delegate), or ask people to discuss with your manager whether more of your time can be allocated to help them.