The 7 Behaviors That Separate Juniors From Seniors

The career-accelerating habits you can adopt regardless of experience

Early in my career at Amazon, I was convinced that becoming a technically superior engineer was the only ticket to advancement. I spent countless hours and late nights producing a ton of code, and diving deep into the technology.

I was a master of grepping logs and the terminal. I knew all of the design patterns. I understood how Amazon built fault-tolerant large-scale distributed systems.

After some time I realized that I was just as technically competent as mid and senior level developers.

But then the truth hit me like a ton of bricks during a performance review when my manager said, "Your technical skills are strong, but that's not what's holding you back. You have the knowledge of a senior but you're not acting like one."

I felt this was completely unfair. I thought that technical skill should be the only consideration.

But then I started observing how more senior people operated.

What I learned is that being good at the functional skills required for your job is necessary but not su…