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Can't speak for OP, but I can tell you what mine is. If you have an intern or a Junior Engineer, they should have a more senior engineer to monitor and mentor
by dan-0 7y ago
Can't speak for OP, but I can tell you what mine is.
If you have an intern or a Junior Engineer, they should have a more senior engineer to monitor and mentor them.
In the situation where a Junior Engineer gets blamed for a screw up:
1. The Senior Engineer failed in their responsibility.
2. The Senior Engineer failed in their responsibility.
A Junior Engineer should be expected to write bad code, but not put it into production, that's on the Senior. If I hit approve on a Junior Engineer's PR, it's my fault if their code brings the whole system down. If a Junior Engineer had the ability to push code without a review, it's my fault for allowing that. Either way it's my fault and it shouldn't be any other way. It's a failure to properly mentor. Not saying it doesn't happen, just that it's never the Junior Engineers fault when it does.
- tiredyam 7y agothe amount of time that the summer intern / new grad eat up of seniors time is the problem. Tech debt that does not get addressed in a timely manner because of mentorship responsibilities is the problems
- deathanatos 7y agoI'd caveat that slightly: only if the senior engineer is not also overburdened with other responsibilities, and the team has the capacity to take on the intern in the first place. I've been on teams where I felt like we desperately needed more FTEs, not interns. But we could hire interns, and not FTEs. (I agree with the premise that an intern or junior eng is supposed to be mentored, and their mistakes caught. How else should they learn?)