The most important thing is to allocate enough time to help them - 20 hours a week for 2-3 months followed by 10 hours/week for the next 1-2 years is usually enough.
Ask HN: Strategies for mentoring junior developers?
71–74 of 74 posts
Re: Ask HN: Strategies for mentoring junior developers?
#72I've always been a fan of assigning maintenance tasks to junior devs (or anyone who's new to an existing codebase.) These are tasks that are often lower priority so there is less time pressure to get them done right, and they give the devs the opportunity to learn the codebase. Working on existing code you don't know yet is also a lot easier than new development on code you don't know (and coding standards you don't…
I understand the rationale, but after getting the "maintenance" role a few times it feels me with dread. Usually when I get maintenance tasks it's for a system no one else wants / dares to touch. Evey time I feel like someone punched me in the face because it's always accompanied with the words like "we need someone else to know this system", "it's only for a little while" and the truth is that if you gain minimum competency in such a system you can say goodbye to more fun tasks - the maintenance of this old crap is your life now. No company will let someone with a knowledge of some obscure shit stop maintaining the obscure shit and move that person to a project that doesn't suck.
Currently this is the 4th time I'm tied up in such a situation and while I was promised to be allowed to work on the "more fun" project "after 6 months so I can get my feet wet" the very last day of these six months I was told that one guy is leaving the company and that I can't work on the fun project because the obscure shit won't have enough manpower. The corporate machine works so slow that it will take at least another six months before someone gets hired. Hell, they're so incompetent that they don't even have a job posting yet.
Re: Ask HN: Strategies for mentoring junior developers?
#73Pair programming for sure. Senior designs the code, junior writes it. Senior doesn't touch keyboard. It's real time code reviewing. The senior's time is rarely wasted. They can always do time consuming high level work like designing test cases, planning out the next part of the work, seeing if the API supports stuff.
I would leave, if someone made me do pair programming.
This is silly, you shut down the idea without any reasoning. I've found this a great way to get integrated into a new team and occasionally when banging heads against a wall trying to figure out an issue.
In reality, pair programming happens very rarely but when it does it's very useful.
Re: Ask HN: Strategies for mentoring junior developers?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would leave, if someone made me do pair programming.
This is silly, you shut down the idea without any reasoning. I've found this a great way to get integrated into a new team and occasionally when banging heads against a wall trying to figure out an issue. In reality, pair programming happens very rarely but when it does it's very useful.
I also hate team building exercises, so there's that. Just let me go home.