What they don't mention is the abysmal salary (£23,000~) they start you on. No idea why anyone would choose to work there.
How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC
101–110 of 166 posts
Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC
#102One thing about junior devs is the level of skill varies greatly. Where I work there's a guy who is nominally a junior dev, but he already knows everything the senior devs are expected to do. If he was an average guy there'd be a lot more handholding, but somehow with barely any hiring process (he was a friend of a friend) we lucked out. I'm wondering whether management will be smart and pay him like a senior dev so he doesn't leave as soon as he finds out he could be making a few hundred grand instead of a few tens.
One major downside of this kind of variation is managers think they can somehow repeat the trick. If we just make the hiring process hard enough and shove enough candidates through, we can pan for those elusive 10x guys. It also makes people think that 10x guys are a thing like a gold nugget in the river, rather than the outcome of a long process of maturation in an appropriate environment.
Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ha. I can relate. At my last gig, it wasn't the seniors developers (well, it was some of them, too). It was the principal developer. As my supervisor, he told me, a senior developer, I asked too many questions. "A senior developer shouldn't need to ask questions." My questions usually weren't even technical questions but rather questions meant to clarify business specs so that we could make better technical decisions…
> "A senior developer shouldn't need documentation. The knowledge should be in your head." What?! This guy isn't fit to be principal developer. Sure, the knowledge should be in your head, but it should also be documented in case you get hit by a bus or go on vacation. Does no one senior ever stop to think about business continuity? What happens when you onboard someone new? A senior developer is just supposed to drop…
Completely agree. On a side note, the one answer that I always get from management when I suggest that we should write more documentation is: "Well, writing documentation could be useful but maintaining it is hard. So I don't think it's a good idea".
As you said, this should be part of the culture. Documentation should be seen as an artifact that is equally as important as the software deliverable itself.
Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC
#104Didn't the BBC outsource all of their programming jobs to Siemens? I had a few friends there who were TUPEd.
Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC
#105I work at a small Japanese company with only two developers; myself and a junior developer (also American) we brought on as my assistant a year ago. He came on with little to no development and technological experience but an incredible work/study ethic and a willingness to learn, which are both MUCH more important to me. The skills can be learned and refined over time, but the fundamentals need to be there; if a dev…
Agreed. It is more about personality than anything else. If you want to learn and solve problems you will simply work at it until you figure it out.
I have seen so many developers utterly fail at this. They require not just a particular language, but a particular framework and a certain specific mountain of abstractions. Any less that could remotely expose their incompetence is immediate cause for rebellion. Their strong arguments are whining and excuses instead of simply figuring it out.
I don't want to have to work at as a baby sitter if I am hired to be a senior developer. Some junior devs are a pleasure to work with and really bring appreciation to the job and others make me want to quit and go do something else.
I say junior devs, but I have also encountered some senior devs whom I would describe as junior.
Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same here. Started as junior (with 7 years programming experience from school) with a few other juniors at a company working on a new product without any senior developers anymore. It sure was a little rough sometimes and we sure made our fair share of errors and technical debt, but it was an amazing experience. And the product still works fine today. So with a motivated team and some autodidactic learning you can st…
It didn't even occur to me that I could educate myself in that time. I started doing it after I was 9 years in.
So you basically sat on your ass and said "somebody teach me"? No wonder that
your colleagues from university got so much better.
I never got much help from other people. In the beginning, I didn't have anybody interested in computers around me at all, yet I managed to learn programming. Then, when I started studying IT and switched to Linux, and I didn't have anybody to systematically learn working with unix from. This happened when I didn't have an access to the internet, and we had very little learning material published (first half of '00 decade), so it wasn't even possible for me to ask a question on StackOverflow or something.
And then the pattern repeats a number of times.
It's not mentoring that helps people grow. It's learning. It can be done with a teacher/mentor (and in fact it's easier in a number of fields), but it doesn't require one. Don't blame others for your own idleness.
Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
He worked at a waterfall digital agency. Literally anything is better than that. The description of working a digital agency matches mine exactly. Your given pictures and told to make it work as fast as possible. With no input into the actual experience.
> "He worked at a waterfall digital agency." > "Your given pictures and told to make it work as fast as possible. With no input into the actual experience." That's not what waterfall is. That's almost the exact opposite of what waterfall is. The general idea behind waterfall is that you do most of the UX design planning before a developer gets to work on it. If you're "given pictures and told to make it work as fast…
What your talking about matches my complaints exactly. I dont understand.
Developers are almost never included in those stages. Your given designs that have already been completed. Then you "make them happen", you have no input in the designs because they have already been designed and signed off. They only care about the speed of implementation, not quality.
Agile means that requirements can be more easily changed from feedback in process.
Pictures = design and user experience documents.
Most product based companies I've worked for means, I actually have input into almost everything around the product. If I feel something is not a great design or is difficult to implement I can change that as I go along. Can't do that in waterfall
Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC
#108I work at a small Japanese company with only two developers; myself and a junior developer (also American) we brought on as my assistant a year ago. He came on with little to no development and technological experience but an incredible work/study ethic and a willingness to learn, which are both MUCH more important to me. The skills can be learned and refined over time, but the fundamentals need to be there; if a dev…
Agreed. It is more about personality than anything else. If you want to learn and solve problems you will simply work at it until you figure it out. I have seen so many developers utterly fail at this. They require not just a particular language, but a particular framework and a certain specific mountain of abstractions. Any less that could remotely expose their incompetence is immediate cause for rebellion. Their st…
> They require not just a particular language, but a particular framework and a certain specific mountain of abstractions. Any less that could remotely expose their incompetence is immediate cause for rebellion.
I would actually rephrase this and go a step farther -- I have met many people who don't like to learn, full stop. They learn the minimal amount necessary to carve out safe, known territory, and do all the work they possibly can to NOT LEAVE THAT AREA.
This is obviously a great survival trait and may be good in some careers, but it's not a trait I'd like to see in a developer, especially one I fully intend to do my best in growing.
Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
It didn't even occur to me that I could educate myself in that time. I started doing it after I was 9 years in.
So you basically sat on your ass and said "somebody teach me"? No wonder that your colleagues from university got so much better. I never got much help from other people. In the beginning, I didn't have anybody interested in computers around me at all, yet I managed to learn programming. Then, when I started studying IT and switched to Linux, and I didn't have anybody to systematically learn working with unix from. T…
Point wasn't that I was lazy, point was that I had the impression after university I'm a dev and get a job and work.
Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you basically sat on your ass and said "somebody teach me"? No wonder that your colleagues from university got so much better. I never got much help from other people. In the beginning, I didn't have anybody interested in computers around me at all, yet I managed to learn programming. Then, when I started studying IT and switched to Linux, and I didn't have anybody to systematically learn working with unix from. T…
Point wasn't that I was lazy, point was that I had the impression after university I'm a dev and get a job and work.
Then I still don't understand what's your point.