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> My cynicism is probably not the best approach to change the world for the better, so any hint on how to teach younger colleagues to stop snacking micro servic
by digging 3y ago
> My cynicism is probably not the best approach to change the world for the better, so any hint on how to teach younger colleagues to stop snacking micro service candy is much appreciated.
I could be way off base here, but I'd bet a lot of junior devs are just trying to stand out. They want respect, raises, promotions, and new job offers. Invisible good solutions don't bring those.
- catchnear4321 3y agojunior devs are junior devs in part because they do not yet know that there is no guarantee that anyone else has been keeping track of their victories come review time. solutions are only invisible due to a lack of sufficient documentation and communication. boring solutions are part of the job. they can be fun if the goal is shifted from implementing to automating. none of this to say you are wrong, but a junior dev that succeeds at such peacocking efforts is signaling the poor health of their surrounding team as much as their eagerness to impress. where was the manager or senior dev to say “great! have you considered a boolean?”
- blq10 3y agoNobody cares about invisible good solutions, because invisible solutions are simple - and developers are to one degree or another, rated on the degree of complexity they can deal with and how smart they can be. It is common here to understand the cleverness behind just doing the dumb thing, but it is not common in many places.
- kdmccormick 3y agoSeems cynical. In my experience, junior devs are just more susceptible to cargo-culting and getting excited about cool ways to apply the things they learned in undergrad. I haven't actually seen a lot of "resume-driven development" in my (relatively limited) time in the industry... just well-intentioned eager people with more knowledge than wisdom.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago> just well-intentioned eager people with more knowledge than wisdom. Yup. And that by definition is a junior colleague ;)
- vrosas 3y agoI like to describe my colleagues as the delta between how smart they are, and how smart they _think_ they are. “Junior” devs almost always fall in the “wide gap” spectrum but it is by no means restricted to any age group.
- chiefalchemist 3y agoDunning Kruger as a spectrum within the context of engineering? That's genius. I'm going to borrow (read: steal) that.
- ajkjk 3y agoStrongly disagree this is a junior dev thing. Most of the terribly complex abstractions are, in my experience creates by people who have enough seniority that others can't easily question them. There are good devs and bad devs, and there are junior and senior devs, but it's the first axis that determines code quality.
- JimDabell 3y agoI’ve seen entire orgs paralysed by a single architecture astronaut who has been there since the beginning who nobody has found a way to route around. Simplicity as a cultural value is underrated, and fetishising complexity can kill a business.
- nicoburns 3y agoHmmm… well it certainly was for me. My code has gotten a lot simpler over time!
- ajkjk 3y agoWell no doubt! Same. You can certainly get better at programming as you get more experience. I'm just saying: the axis that determines this stuff is skill, not seniority. They correlate but they're not the same thing.