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Ask HN: Strategies for being more patient with less experienced developers?
- noemit 9y agoBe a decent person. Acknowledge that your “expertise” is mostly memorization of common patterns and bugs. Nothing about understanding programming indicates a higher intelligence or makes you a better person. So chill out and have fun explaining all the basics of something you love. After all, if you can’t explain it in simple terms, it might mean you need to learn more about it yourself.
- sidlls 9y ago"You aren't as smart as you think you are" is a cold, hard truth many people in this industry need to have a reckoning with. I don't think a person should be entitled to anything above "senior developer" until and unless he or she has mentored juniors for some time. The most technically skilled individual on the planet is almost every time just one tiny contributor. Their mentoring of juniors acts as a multiplier of their own skill.
- ggm 9y agoSet them achievable goals and reward small achievements. Pair program and reward the pair. Be firm in overriding but do not objectify or blame naievity. Consider their ideas for their merits as well as the shitlist of downsides your experience tells you lie there. Give them a chance to explore and reject their own ideas and value their critique of your ideas. Negative feedback reinforcement is worse than positive feedback reinforcement overall, with humans.