A senior developer challenges your coding practices. How do you respond?
When a senior developer challenges your coding practices, it's crucial to handle the situation professionally and with an open mind. Here's how you can turn this into a constructive experience:
How do you handle feedback from senior colleagues in your field? Share your strategies.
A senior developer challenges your coding practices. How do you respond?
When a senior developer challenges your coding practices, it's crucial to handle the situation professionally and with an open mind. Here's how you can turn this into a constructive experience:
How do you handle feedback from senior colleagues in your field? Share your strategies.
-
Stay Open-Minded – Listen carefully to their feedback without being defensive. Ask for Clarification – Understand their reasoning and best practices. Explain Your Approach – Justify your decisions with logic and trade-offs. Learn and Adapt – Be willing to improve and adopt better techniques. Seek a Middle Ground – Collaborate to find the best solution for the team. Document and Apply – Implement improvements and document lessons learned.
-
don't take offense, the Sr is there to guide and mentor, and knows "where the bodies are hidden". Listen to the Senior. overall, it's going to be a battle of egos and the Sr probably has the ear of someone, meaning you will lose many times over. So listen to the Sr. If it's bad, go back and fix it later. We do this job because its fun, we don't have a fixed number of nails to punch, we get 8 hours to experiment.
-
It is always necessary to consider the experience of our collaborators, so feedback is very important. Actively listening and asking for clarifications is the right approach, but receiving the experiences of colleagues, knowing how they applied strategies in similar cases, and how they faced challenges helps us to tackle new projects continuously improving to seek the expected success.
-
Be open to feedback, but also make sure that you draw a boundary where the person on your team - whoever they are - remains respectful and focused on delivering better code / product. Some senior developers may have a tendency to come off as rude - & sometimes get stuck in their own ways. You want to be receptive to feedback, but also make sure the person on the other end is providing constructive feedback.
-
Handling feedback from senior colleagues effectively is essential for growth and collaboration. Here are my strategies: 1. **Stay Open-Minded** – I remind myself that feedback isn’t personal; it’s about improving the work. Instead of reacting defensively, I focus on understanding their perspective. 2. **Listen and Clarify** – I make sure to actively listen, take notes if necessary, and ask clarifying questions to ensure I fully understand their point. 3. **Analyze Before Acting** – Not all feedback needs to be implemented immediately. I take time to evaluate their suggestions, considering the trade-offs and how they align with best practices. 4. **Consider it as an opportunity** – I treat feedback as a learning opportunity.