I’ve heard that before and I’m not sure how common it is but what a drain on QOL for the captain! To remedy this, when captain briefs and says “ya got anything?” I do. Usually something like…”if I do anything wacky and you sense you’d like to say something. Please, say it. I don’t want to be doing wacky things and making your life hard. I can accept correction “.

I’m not a black belt FO. I do make mistakes. However, approaching 8 years, I also don’t present too many wacky things anymore. I just don’t want to be mixed in with this “senior FO mentality” that I’ve heard about. I feel like a fairly humble statement at the beginning of a pairing might help to remove the need for the captain to feel me out if I’m one of “them”. We can just immediately start out without that obstacle. It’s a small thing but success is built on getting small things done right. I hoped things like this would be more common.
The very best compliment at the end of a pairing isn’t “good job”. It’s “I fly with you, I feel like I’m flying with me!”. “I wish I could fly with you every time”. “You make my life so easy”. “You are definitely not the norm”. If FOs get that feedback, they are on the mark! It isn’t proficiency alone that gets those comments. It’s attitude, willingness, doing more than is required. Small things like having the FMCs set up for the brief. When you see the captain running landing numbers hit the prog page, on FO side, instead of making him reach across. You already know that he needs it. Pulling up the Cpt side PWB page while you wait for the ding and the captain is calling home. Setting both EO courses, clean up altitudes, announcing if changing radios between ramp and ground, always looking and announcing clearance while turning before asked, and a thousand more trivial things you can do. FOs should strive to be the Chick-fil-A worker on the flight deck. It’s not hard, it helps the other guy, it’s self-rewarding, it’s fun. None of this means flying hands in the cockpit or overrunning the borders into the Captains territory. That’s the opposite ditch that you don’t drive into.