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It could also be that teams of people that work best together, grow the fastest together - that is, if you and your teammates are always helping each other out

It could also be that teams of people that work best together, grow the fastest together - that is, if you and your teammates are always helping each other out in big and small ways, then every engineer - even the ones that started out weaker - can become strong (or become confident, which can often be the same thing) over time.

josephg 2y ago
Maybe. How much of your programming ability comes from mentorship from your coworkers? I think its less than 10% for me. Maybe its a lot more for others, particularly self taught programmers? But that still doesn't explain my classroom experience. Some of my weaker students worked much harder than some of my more talented students. The weaker students also ended up getting a lot more 1-on-1 time from me as a teacher. That helped a bit - but the ranking in assessments was - for the most part - depressingly stable. I think the world would be a much fairer place if ability was purely a function of how much work you've put in. But unfortunately I don't think the data backs that up.
- t-writescode 2y ago
  A lot of my: * more advanced refactoring tricks, * patterns to improve mental management * project layout methodologies * SQL techniques and learning And more have come from mentorship with my coworkers; and I know that I've helped several developers grow more skilled themselves by showing them that a more tenured developer gets just as stuck, frustrated, etc - while also showing techniques to get myself unstuck, the way I search for answers, etc. I've also made sure to give others project sizes that I think they can handle - and when I'm wrong, I make shrink the task into smaller bits that they can then probably handle, and all of that builds confidence and experience without breaking them down. I think it even helps to build them up. So, yeah, definitely more than 10%. I'm speaking especially about the work environment. When I was going through college, sure, there were fellow students that had rougher times; but once I got into the industry everyone has been sufficiently skilled to work through things. Now, sometimes I was better at specific areas of work than people of the same or higher rank; but stepping back and watching, they were better at other areas than I was - a lot better.

josephg 2y ago

Maybe. How much of your programming ability comes from mentorship from your coworkers? I think its less than 10% for me. Maybe its a lot more for others, particularly self taught programmers? But that still doesn't explain my classroom experience. Some of my weaker students worked much harder than some of my more talented students. The weaker students also ended up getting a lot more 1-on-1 time from me as a teacher. That helped a bit - but the ranking in assessments was - for the most part - depressingly stable. I think the world would be a much fairer place if ability was purely a function of how much work you've put in. But unfortunately I don't think the data backs that up.

t-writescode 2y ago
A lot of my: * more advanced refactoring tricks, * patterns to improve mental management * project layout methodologies * SQL techniques and learning And more have come from mentorship with my coworkers; and I know that I've helped several developers grow more skilled themselves by showing them that a more tenured developer gets just as stuck, frustrated, etc - while also showing techniques to get myself unstuck, the way I search for answers, etc. I've also made sure to give others project sizes that I think they can handle - and when I'm wrong, I make shrink the task into smaller bits that they can then probably handle, and all of that builds confidence and experience without breaking them down. I think it even helps to build them up. So, yeah, definitely more than 10%. I'm speaking especially about the work environment. When I was going through college, sure, there were fellow students that had rougher times; but once I got into the industry everyone has been sufficiently skilled to work through things. Now, sometimes I was better at specific areas of work than people of the same or higher rank; but stepping back and watching, they were better at other areas than I was - a lot better.