Most people don't have seniors to learn from, so don't feel like you are behind because of that. What I did was constantly build stuff at home, commercialization motivating me. I learned plenty of stuff that way. I created websites in the early days of the WWW. I created iPhone apps back when it came out, I created improved versions of apps used at work, I built new apps that work would use, etc. I kept in mind that these apps needed to work at the "enterprise" level, so I had to make sure they could handle load, had efficient algorithms, database structures, etc.
My thought process was I get to learn stuff, so even if I didn't make any money off it (I mostly didn't), I learned how to ship. This included (yuck) documentation, QA, etc. Doing things like that you really learn not only how to code and how to structure your programs, but about the 80/20 rule which to me is it takes 20% to get POC and 80% to get it ready to ship.
The senior I finally got to work with was mainly to validate that I was on the right path, because I could write just as well as he could. I met this guy probably 4 years into my career and we were pretty equal at that time. He had about 5+ more years experience than me, and he was VERY sharp. I probably haven't worked with someone better since and this was 20+ years ago.
One more thing, I was the "computer guy," at my first company out of college. I did the workstation building and support, the networking, the server setup and user administration (Windows NT days), and wrote applications in MS Access for the company to use. I had to interview the users and managers on what the apps should do and whatnot. I had to learn how to scale MS Access for 250+ user base (ugh). I had to do all the reports and everything computer related. That company was a toxic shithole but it was actually a blessing. I never would have learned as much had I got a big corporate job. You tend to get pigeonholed in those places doing the same thing over and over. And yes, I was terrified of not being good enough the whole time; that helped too.
My thought process was I get to learn stuff, so even if I didn't make any money off it (I mostly didn't), I learned how to ship. This included (yuck) documentation, QA, etc. Doing things like that you really learn not only how to code and how to structure your programs, but about the 80/20 rule which to me is it takes 20% to get POC and 80% to get it ready to ship.
The senior I finally got to work with was mainly to validate that I was on the right path, because I could write just as well as he could. I met this guy probably 4 years into my career and we were pretty equal at that time. He had about 5+ more years experience than me, and he was VERY sharp. I probably haven't worked with someone better since and this was 20+ years ago.
One more thing, I was the "computer guy," at my first company out of college. I did the workstation building and support, the networking, the server setup and user administration (Windows NT days), and wrote applications in MS Access for the company to use. I had to interview the users and managers on what the apps should do and whatnot. I had to learn how to scale MS Access for 250+ user base (ugh). I had to do all the reports and everything computer related. That company was a toxic shithole but it was actually a blessing. I never would have learned as much had I got a big corporate job. You tend to get pigeonholed in those places doing the same thing over and over. And yes, I was terrified of not being good enough the whole time; that helped too.
Good luck!