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How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC

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131–140 of 166 posts

Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC

#131
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a great admission, to admit that to yourself let alone in a pseudo-public environment shows growth and maturity so many tech people often lack

I want to be good in what I do, not just think I am good.

Many people can take enough from simply feeling better than everyone around them.

On the other hand I often feel bad about myself, which isn't good either.

Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC

#132
post #89

Lots of good stuff in this, but i have a couple of significant nits. First, paired programming is a great way to help a junior learn. But it’s dependent upon their desire, i do it frequently with one whose eyes glaze over when i explain what i’m doing and i know when they start surfing the web while i’m implementing. But otherwise paired programming is just a great way to slow me down. Secondly, the open floor plan t…

> i do it frequently with one whose eyes glaze over when i explain what i’m doing and i know when they start surfing the web while i’m implementing. That is why you have them handle the keyboard while you decide what to type.

[deleted]

Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC

#133
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Senior developers mentor, simplify, document, and admit when they don't know the answers. Sadly this is far from my experience as well. It's likely a few toxic work environments. Not to hijack your comment but I would like to offer a specific example I've seen of toxic behavior from senior developers. Many don't actually read the questions you ask of them or trust your knowledge. It's very similar to attitudes I se…

Maybe I read your post wrong, but your post seems to complain that Senior Developers don't believe some Junior hires have minimum competency if they are unable to compile a file. That seems like something a Junior Dev should have mastered during their educational period.

Wow, I’m considered a Senior Developer (only 30 years experience), and I’d say one if the biggest problems I deal with is getting code to compile. Large code base, “clever” code constructs left by long gone devs, and a language, that while usually great to work with, sometimes gives inscrutable compile error messages (Swift)

Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC

#134
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine to put managers in the same area as their teams. It's fine if you prefer to work in an open area. But studies are pretty consistent that developers are more productive with fewer distractions. Not giving developers the option of private offices is underutilizing some of your most expensive resources.

True! I think a lot of modern workplaces are good at compromising on this. In our case, we don't have private offices, but there are quiet working areas that you can go to to work. Although these are sparse in our Salford campus, unfortunately; there's a lot more in the London buildings.

I actually work in an open floor plan. I have a great boss, coworkers, interesting work, the only thing I hate are the distractions.

In our case we have “breakout rooms”, nominally for impromptu meetings but it’s acceptable to camp out in them for a while if you need privacy/focus. But I can’t drag my big screen monitor in them, or use them every day, so they are a very imperfect solution. If we added large screen monitors to them, and allowed engineers to camp in them most of the day every day, they’d be perfect. But then they’d be, private offices.

The last time I managed people, I had the company build small single person offices for them. If they needed to pairs or a bit, they had just enough room for that. If they needed a meeting with more than 2 people, there were rooms for that.

We never had problems with collaboration or communication, and this was before slack. Team members would email non urgent information to their team. Product managers would sit in your office to work out details of a new feature or bug to be solved. But if it wasn’t urgent, they’d respect your need for focus.

Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC

#135
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 f…

> "Developers are almost never included in those stages."

That's not been my experience. I've seen business analysts working closely with developers to scope out what's needed and find the the best way forward, before the coding is due to start. For all the the apparent negatives of waterfall, I've seen that it can work quite well, when it's used correctly.

Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC

#136
post #109
post #106

Earlier 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.

Are you saying it took you 9 years of seeing other people know and learn things you weren't taught at the Uni before you realized you could look things up with Google?

Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC

#137
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I read your post wrong, but your post seems to complain that Senior Developers don't believe some Junior hires have minimum competency if they are unable to compile a file. That seems like something a Junior Dev should have mastered during their educational period.

> complain that Senior Developers don't believe some Junior hires have minimum competency if they are unable to compile a file. You're definitely taking the wrong impression from my post then. Do you code in C / C++? If you've never had an issue compiling a large codebase as a new developer then I should either bow before your greatness or mock you for your inexperience because in large, complicated projects with 100…

You misunderstand. It is not that I have never had issues with compilation or linkage, but that a Junior Dev should be able to learn how to perform the compilation, learning the vagaries of the architecture and build system.

You mention Enterprise development among other items. Making a shim or method for onboarding new devs is exactly a way for one to advance in Enterprise development. Therefore the Junior Dev should take this opportunity to learn the internal system and create a way to simplify its use for others. Not doing something like this is a trap that many Junior devs fall into, even when a Senior dev hangs the opportunity out in front of them.

Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC

#138
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I read your post wrong, but your post seems to complain that Senior Developers don't believe some Junior hires have minimum competency if they are unable to compile a file. That seems like something a Junior Dev should have mastered during their educational period.

Wow, I’m considered a Senior Developer (only 30 years experience), and I’d say one if the biggest problems I deal with is getting code to compile. Large code base, “clever” code constructs left by long gone devs, and a language, that while usually great to work with, sometimes gives inscrutable compile error messages (Swift)

Exactly :)

Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC

#139
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you saying it took you 9 years of seeing other people know and learn things you weren't taught at the Uni before you realized you could look things up with Google?

No, I looked many things up and I learned, but it wasn't much and really unstructured.

I just came to work and did what had to be done. After years I learned that there is much more and I don't have to fear things that are outside of my comfort zone.

Re: How We Grow Junior Developers at the BBC

#140

Sorry to stray offtopic, but are remote junior dev jobs feasible?

How remote? 1 visit every 6 months, or 1 day a week? And what type of dev - software, or something more BBC specific involving actual broadcast?

1 visit every 6 months based on location and software
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