5 ms·

Unfortunately, the type of work you hate doing is perfect for a junior. Easy tasks to get a hold on the system.

by shaky-carrousel 1y ago

reactordev 1y ago
Yup, sounds like a great opportunity to show you’re senior by mentoring.
- bayarearefugee 1y ago
  Which will (sadly) offer you zero extrinsic benefit at almost every job, and will often actually count against you as a waste of time relative to the vast majority of productivity metrics that companies actually use.
  - mystifyingpoi 1y ago
    Which is unfortunately very true. I think, that in a healthy organization such kind of mentoring requires extremely well defined boundaries and rules. Can I spend 1h of my time explaining basic stuff to a junior, who will then be able to finish his task in 2h instead of 8h? Mathematically this is a win for the company. But economically, maybe that junior dev should be fired.
    - xp84 1y ago
      That's the problem -- except in the rare type of org that thinks past quarterly or annual results and thus values training up a pipeline to be the future seniors -- economically speaking, all the junior devs should be fired, and the simple tasks they can do are the same set of tasks that can be accomplished by a senior at the helm of AI at 10-50x the speed.
  - godelski 1y ago
    There's a lot of benefits you get by mentoring. When you have to teach you're forced to think more deeply about problems, see it from different angles, and revisit questions you had when learning but tabled at that time. That last one is pretty common. There's always questions you have when learning that you have to avoid because you don't have the knowledge to answer yet, because they would take you down too deep a rabbit hole. But later you have the experience to navigate those problems. Personally, I've learned a ton while teaching. It's given me many new ideas and insights. But I'm obviously not alone in this. Even Feynman talks about how teaching results in better learning
    - thirdsun 1y ago
      I don't think you have to convince the parent poster or seniors developers in general. You have to convince their employers that this is a valuable use of time.
      - godelski 1y ago
        I interpreted the extrinsic benefits differently, but fair. Still, I think being vocal about this helps. We can put pressure on our managers
  - reactordev 1y ago
    Someone mentored you, pay it forward. If you think you got where you are entirely on your own, you need therapy.
    - TeMPOraL 1y ago
      Oh come on. Plenty of us here never had any form of direct mentorship at work or otherwise. It's not unusual when you pick up the trade as a hobby in your teens, and in terms of programming and technical skills (which is what we're discussing here), you stopped being a junior before getting your first job. Myself, I learned from many folks on IRC and ol' phpBB boards, and I helped others on IRC and said phpBB boards in return; almost all of that was before graduating. That, and books, lots of books, and even more time spent just reading code online and writing my own. None of that hardly qualifies as "mentoring".
      - reactordev 1y ago
        [flagged]
        grayhatter 1y ago
        > If you didn’t go that route, you were still looked at as a junior. Your ego clouds your view. your ego clouds your response. He wasn't talking about if he was hired into a jr role, he was talking about the competency, experience, and skills acquired from the years of writing code for passion. If he could write better code, or debug problems faster than your average jr level employee. Not everyone fits into the tiny bucket you've imagined must hold everyone. The answer could easily be, we hired you because you ticked all the boxes, but no one doing the interview could tell they were completely out classed.
        reactordev 1y ago
        If you’re employed, you’re in a bucket. It’s a cell on a spreadsheet somewhere. I’ve yet to find a junior dev that had more skills than a junior dev. I’ve seen them try… but they are still a junior dev. If you aren’t a junior dev, then you aren’t. Mentorship has nothing to do with what bucket you’re in. However, there are specific job duties of senior and higher that are beyond just writing code. One of them is making more seniors. There’s only one way to do that efficiently. Learning. And while you can go read a manual on how to put a Ferrari together, wouldn’t you want to work with a mechanic who has already made dozens of them? Why do we reject help?
  - danielheath 1y ago
    15 years later when the folks you mentored are sitting on hiring panels, it doesn’t seem so bad. Obviously that’s not why I did it, but I am not unhappy about it either.
- aeternum 1y ago
  Mentorship is unfortunately broken because gone are the days of apprenticeships. If you find a great mentor, do everything you can to learn quickly then jump ship to big tech and cash in.
  - qnleigh 1y ago
    This is kind of sad. I'm probably missing context here, but surely it's not necessary to rush out of a good working relationship with a good mentor. The most important things you'll learn from a good mentor can't be learned in a rush (like prioritization, project management, how to be a good mentor...). In any case, I would replace 'jump ship' with 'pay it forward.'
  - ljm 1y ago
    A great mentor won’t waste their time on someone cynically using their time to cash out at Meta. Such a person can just get a CS degree and launch into Amazon for that. Big Tech are just the IT enterprises of the modern day. It’s not where the action is and that experience is not so hot on the CV when it comes to early stage development.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Depends on the country, they are pretty much alive across many European countries. Here are two examples, A German site to search for technical schools with apprenticeship, https://www.ausbildung.de/ https://www.ausbildung.de/ The same for Portugal https://www.escolasprofissionais.com/ https://www.escolasprofissionais.com/
  - pydry 1y ago
    There's also not much in it for the mentor other than the warm glow in the heart.
  - alexashka 1y ago
    There's unfortunately a crack epidemic. Try to quickly become a drug dealer and cash in. --- Chef's kiss. I'd like to thank people like you for where we are.
  - reactordev 1y ago
- TeMPOraL 1y ago
  Mentoring is a different kind of work than coding. Like senior+ level in some companies, it's just faux management - people work, with all the expectations and responsibilities of the non-technical track, but none of the status and privileges.
morkalork 1y ago
>How'd you get so good at debugging and navigating code you've never seen before? >Because I spent a couple internships and a whole year as a junior debugging, triaging and patching every single issue reported by other developers and the QA team Was I jealous that the full time and senior devs got to do all the feature work and architecture design? Yes. Am I a better developer having done that grind? Also yes.
- _heimdall 1y ago
  100%. I shouldn't have done the architecture work on any meaningful scale early on, but I was always interested. My early roles were largely me being able to architect smaller pieces in a larger plan, building some architecture skills while learning larger patterns that worked and thought processes along the way. I'd recommend that approach to anyone working with more junior devs.

Unfortunately, the type of work you hate doing is perfect for a junior. Easy tasks to get a hold on the system.

reactordev 1y ago

Yup, sounds like a great opportunity to show you’re senior by mentoring.

bayarearefugee 1y ago
Which will (sadly) offer you zero extrinsic benefit at almost every job, and will often actually count against you as a waste of time relative to the vast majority of productivity metrics that companies actually use.
- mystifyingpoi 1y ago
  Which is unfortunately very true. I think, that in a healthy organization such kind of mentoring requires extremely well defined boundaries and rules. Can I spend 1h of my time explaining basic stuff to a junior, who will then be able to finish his task in 2h instead of 8h? Mathematically this is a win for the company. But economically, maybe that junior dev should be fired.
  - xp84 1y ago
    That's the problem -- except in the rare type of org that thinks past quarterly or annual results and thus values training up a pipeline to be the future seniors -- economically speaking, all the junior devs should be fired, and the simple tasks they can do are the same set of tasks that can be accomplished by a senior at the helm of AI at 10-50x the speed.
- godelski 1y ago
  There's a lot of benefits you get by mentoring. When you have to teach you're forced to think more deeply about problems, see it from different angles, and revisit questions you had when learning but tabled at that time. That last one is pretty common. There's always questions you have when learning that you have to avoid because you don't have the knowledge to answer yet, because they would take you down too deep a rabbit hole. But later you have the experience to navigate those problems. Personally, I've learned a ton while teaching. It's given me many new ideas and insights. But I'm obviously not alone in this. Even Feynman talks about how teaching results in better learning
  - thirdsun 1y ago
    I don't think you have to convince the parent poster or seniors developers in general. You have to convince their employers that this is a valuable use of time.
    - godelski 1y ago
      I interpreted the extrinsic benefits differently, but fair. Still, I think being vocal about this helps. We can put pressure on our managers
- reactordev 1y ago
  Someone mentored you, pay it forward. If you think you got where you are entirely on your own, you need therapy.
  - TeMPOraL 1y ago
    Oh come on. Plenty of us here never had any form of direct mentorship at work or otherwise. It's not unusual when you pick up the trade as a hobby in your teens, and in terms of programming and technical skills (which is what we're discussing here), you stopped being a junior before getting your first job. Myself, I learned from many folks on IRC and ol' phpBB boards, and I helped others on IRC and said phpBB boards in return; almost all of that was before graduating. That, and books, lots of books, and even more time spent just reading code online and writing my own. None of that hardly qualifies as "mentoring".
    - reactordev 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - grayhatter 1y ago
        > If you didn’t go that route, you were still looked at as a junior. Your ego clouds your view. your ego clouds your response. He wasn't talking about if he was hired into a jr role, he was talking about the competency, experience, and skills acquired from the years of writing code for passion. If he could write better code, or debug problems faster than your average jr level employee. Not everyone fits into the tiny bucket you've imagined must hold everyone. The answer could easily be, we hired you because you ticked all the boxes, but no one doing the interview could tell they were completely out classed.
        reactordev 1y ago
        If you’re employed, you’re in a bucket. It’s a cell on a spreadsheet somewhere. I’ve yet to find a junior dev that had more skills than a junior dev. I’ve seen them try… but they are still a junior dev. If you aren’t a junior dev, then you aren’t. Mentorship has nothing to do with what bucket you’re in. However, there are specific job duties of senior and higher that are beyond just writing code. One of them is making more seniors. There’s only one way to do that efficiently. Learning. And while you can go read a manual on how to put a Ferrari together, wouldn’t you want to work with a mechanic who has already made dozens of them? Why do we reject help?
- danielheath 1y ago
  15 years later when the folks you mentored are sitting on hiring panels, it doesn’t seem so bad. Obviously that’s not why I did it, but I am not unhappy about it either.
aeternum 1y ago
Mentorship is unfortunately broken because gone are the days of apprenticeships. If you find a great mentor, do everything you can to learn quickly then jump ship to big tech and cash in.
- qnleigh 1y ago
  This is kind of sad. I'm probably missing context here, but surely it's not necessary to rush out of a good working relationship with a good mentor. The most important things you'll learn from a good mentor can't be learned in a rush (like prioritization, project management, how to be a good mentor...). In any case, I would replace 'jump ship' with 'pay it forward.'
- ljm 1y ago
  A great mentor won’t waste their time on someone cynically using their time to cash out at Meta. Such a person can just get a CS degree and launch into Amazon for that. Big Tech are just the IT enterprises of the modern day. It’s not where the action is and that experience is not so hot on the CV when it comes to early stage development.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Depends on the country, they are pretty much alive across many European countries. Here are two examples, A German site to search for technical schools with apprenticeship, https://www.ausbildung.de/ https://www.ausbildung.de/ The same for Portugal https://www.escolasprofissionais.com/ https://www.escolasprofissionais.com/
- pydry 1y ago
  There's also not much in it for the mentor other than the warm glow in the heart.
- alexashka 1y ago
  There's unfortunately a crack epidemic. Try to quickly become a drug dealer and cash in. --- Chef's kiss. I'd like to thank people like you for where we are.
- reactordev 1y ago
TeMPOraL 1y ago
Mentoring is a different kind of work than coding. Like senior+ level in some companies, it's just faux management - people work, with all the expectations and responsibilities of the non-technical track, but none of the status and privileges.

morkalork 1y ago

>How'd you get so good at debugging and navigating code you've never seen before? >Because I spent a couple internships and a whole year as a junior debugging, triaging and patching every single issue reported by other developers and the QA team Was I jealous that the full time and senior devs got to do all the feature work and architecture design? Yes. Am I a better developer having done that grind? Also yes.

_heimdall 1y ago
100%. I shouldn't have done the architecture work on any meaningful scale early on, but I was always interested. My early roles were largely me being able to architect smaller pieces in a larger plan, building some architecture skills while learning larger patterns that worked and thought processes along the way. I'd recommend that approach to anyone working with more junior devs.