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Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks

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Re: Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks

#11

Post by theamk »

noodletheworld wrote: post #5

The A signals are not A signals in this article, and this: > You may be wondering where this “extra” time is going to come from. You’re already committed up to your eyeballs. …We’ll talk about time management, task queue management, diff queue management, and other topics that will accelerate your progress. Is just corporate dog whistling. If you are over committed, no amount of time management will solve your proble…

Not true at all.. I know people who work strict 9-5 and are clearly A. And I was unlucky to have a coworker who worked extra long hours just to write huge amount of code which did not solve the task required and kept breaking prod too.

Re: Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks

#12

Post by mohamedkoubaa »

LPisGood wrote: post #3

This is an interesting perspective(and a great roadmap for juniors to try to improve), but I think for the most part the thesis is wrong, at least in my experience. Companies do not hire juniors as some long tern play to develop them into good engineers. They hire juniors because they have junior level tasks that need completed.

Not anymore. We give those tasks to genies and hire juniors as apprentices

Re: Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks

#13

Post by jordand »

LPisGood wrote: post #3

This is an interesting perspective(and a great roadmap for juniors to try to improve), but I think for the most part the thesis is wrong, at least in my experience. Companies do not hire juniors as some long tern play to develop them into good engineers. They hire juniors because they have junior level tasks that need completed.

That does happen, and that junior level work is constructive, but what I've also experienced and noticed is that companies put a lot of effort into finding and hiring exceptionally skilled juniors (industrial placement schemes, graduate fast-tracks, etc.) where they can make safe bets on those people delivering significant value to their companies/projects. Some bigger companies do make an effort to build a mutually beneficial working relationship with a clear 5 year career roadmap (some sectors really struggle with those best candidates choosing FinTech instead). I've worked with high-performing junior programmers that have (quantitatively and qualitatively) dramatically outperformed experienced mid-level programmers, so I'm always an advocate for investing in them.

Re: Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks

#15

Post by noodletheworld »

colechristensen wrote: post #9
noodletheworld wrote: post #5

The A signals are not A signals in this article, and this: > You may be wondering where this “extra” time is going to come from. You’re already committed up to your eyeballs. …We’ll talk about time management, task queue management, diff queue management, and other topics that will accelerate your progress. Is just corporate dog whistling. If you are over committed, no amount of time management will solve your proble…

Eh. There is a lot to be said about how efficiently you work. This involves making choices about how you solve problems, in what order you solve problems, how you manage people interrupting you, your personal life interface with work, how you advocate for what work to be done... on and on and on. An easy example: spending 2 days on automation for a task that takes an hour to do manually -- is this a task you have to…

This is self-help nonsense your manager will tell you when giving you too much work.

Companies will smartly balance the amount of work allocated to people.

…and then they will push you to take on more work.

High achievers, across the board, consistently demonstrate putting more effort in.

Its just a bitter pill to swallow for some people.

Re: Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks

#16

Post by jofzar »

> We seniors have our regular work to do, but we also have to figure out which category you fit into. We support the superior performers as much as we possibly can. We support the solid performers enough to help them mature. Brutal as it seems, we’d like to expend as little effort as possible on people who aren’t going to make it.

Holy crap this person has only ever worked in toxic work environments

Re: Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks

#18

Post by mlinhares »

smackeyacky wrote: post #7

I work at a place that is actively hiring juniors. While they don’t have an explicit rating system I feel like we unconsciously follow a similar pattern with new coders and it’s unfortunate. Given that older staff generally have a legacy of responsibility they don’t always have the time required to coach people who lack that self-starting spark. The quality of the questions and how much effort they have put in to ans…

Not to sound soulless but why would you want to invest on the C’s?

Unless we have no options I don’t see why so that. I’ve had to deal with people like that and it’s a tar pit.

Re: Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks

#19

Post by logankeenan »

> You uncover a better design and submit a string of diffs not only implementing the task but simplifying other parts of the code too. Bonus points for doing this before you implement (make the hard change easy then make the easy change).

The last part of this really stands out. A high performer understands that software is malleable. However, the way you shape it, when things change, and how much is changed at one time matters a lot

Re: Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks

#20

Post by teeray »

chalupa-supreme wrote: post #6

For a B level: > * You did not cause other people unreasonable amounts of work.* I would be careful with this one. As the examples listed after, such as an on-call incident or extra review of code isn’t necessarily on the n00b. Maybe I’m biased being only 4 years into my career but engagement on stuff you did wrong or even points on what you can do better are extremely valuable. From my standpoint, screwing up isn’t…

I would as well. If you didn’t stop it at the review stage, it’s the team’s problem. It’s not “X’s code broke prod.” In at-will, X can up and leave before you have time to give them shit for it. Then it’s the team’s problem anyway. Make sure you collectively own what you merge.
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