To be fair, there have also been plenty of times in this situation where the senior dev was wrong. You were right to question things and we should make sure to

To be fair, there have also been plenty of times in this situation where the senior dev was wrong. You were right to question things and we should make sure to continue to encourage questions. The difference between a new grad and a senior dev is that the senior dev has the real-life experience to make the "yes/no" decision as to whether the new grad's input actually makes things better (e.g. it could be true that it doesn't matter if it is asymptotically faster if we are always working with small data). It's also a trait of a senior dev to be able to stay level-headed in these situations