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The hardest part of being a junior developer

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Re: The hardest part of being a junior developer

#11

Post by pydry »

Onboarding is hard even as a senior.

On the one hand interruption is expensive: https://heeris.id.au/trinkets/ProgrammerInterrupted.png

On the other hand, spinning your wheels trying to figure out something for an hour is expensive.

I've never really found a solution to maximizing my "interruption budget". Inevitably I end up both spinning my wheels too long sometimes and interrupting too much at other times.

Meanwhile trying to solve this problem also consumes way too many brain CPU cycles.

Re: The hardest part of being a junior developer

#12

Post by c7DJTLrn »

cke wrote: post #6

This one hits home for me. Early on in my career, I had a "mentor" tell me to try it on my own before asking any questions only to swear under his breath when I messed up. It was a massive source of anxiety balancing between asking a question and the risk of messing up. When working with junior engineers nowadays, I go out of my way to let them know that any question at any time is acceptable. I'll put down what I'm…

>Early on in my career, I had a "mentor" tell me to try it on my own before asking any questions only to swear under his breath when I messed up

May I ask how long ago this was? Although shit colleagues and shit workplaces still exist, it feels like these days it would be shut down pretty quick by HR in the average company.

Re: The hardest part of being a junior developer

#13

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

I just had to talk with a couple more junior people on my team about this.

We're having difficulty on people wheel spinning and taking too long to reach out when there's problems but it's not because they can't but there's a sense you develop as you gain more experience on what that "red line" is when you need to reach out.

It's a combination of experience with the task (language, codebase, etc), agile point values (or just "level of effort") and how easy it is to approach those with the answers. As they're continuing to do work, evaluate where the time you've currently spent matches up to each of those three things. If you've hit that red line, time to start sounding alarm bells (relatively).

It really is a learned skill and takes time, juniors shouldn't feel bad and seniors/leads shouldn't make them feel bad. Seniors/leads should also be planning for learning this skill into their estimates to stakeholders.

Re: The hardest part of being a junior developer

#14

Post by Scubabear68 »

This is not limited to juniors.

  I know some fairly senior devs who are afraid to say “I don’t know” or admit they are stuck.  Particularly when they are working on someone else’s legacy code that may be of dubious quality.  It is a shame, because in many cases just a little humility and admission they are human would make them much stronger developers.
As it is, it leads to a level of distrust and uncertainty within the team and with management.

Re: The hardest part of being a junior developer

#15

Post by TideAd »

Waterluvian wrote: post #10

I had a mentor at my last job who clearly really didn't want to be one. It was to the point that I would sit paralyzed behind him, loathing turning around to get his help. In all fairness, I had yet to learn a good way to get help without interrupting his hard work. I'm not sure he ever fully knew he was my mentor, but without his help I was completely blocked on making any progress on the deep-end project I was thro…

I have a couple quasi-mentors like this. I'm stuck between feeling grateful for what they taught me (a whole lot) and feeling absolutely sure that I will never be that neglectful to a junior dev in my own career as they were with me.

Re: The hardest part of being a junior developer

#16

Post by marmetio »

Time boxing progress their is good, but it also helps to explain how to ask for help. I tell them if they get stuck to give me a short writeup on the objective, what they tried, why it didn't work, and their questions. It makes them reflect on their work and helps me understand what they need. After a few times, they can usually solve most of their own problems.

Re: The hardest part of being a junior developer

#17

Post by Justsignedup »

I solved this problem, quite well, and still do this all the damn time:

1) try to solve the problem

2) Gee, it's hard. shit. okay think think think

3) okay ask for help. wait... let's write a slack message. First write the problem, explain exactly what you tried, and ideas for next attempts. Explain your confusions.

4) OMG I SOLVED IT

or

4a) Hit send.

I find that 70% of the time, I don't hit send. 30% of the time it was worth asking.

Re: The hardest part of being a junior developer

#18

Post by tomkarho »

Justsignedup wrote: post #17

I solved this problem, quite well, and still do this all the damn time: 1) try to solve the problem 2) Gee, it's hard. shit. okay think think think 3) okay ask for help. wait... let's write a slack message. First write the problem, explain exactly what you tried, and ideas for next attempts. Explain your confusions. 4) OMG I SOLVED IT or 4a) Hit send. I find that 70% of the time, I don't hit send. 30% of the time it…

Before slack, Stackoverflow was my rubber ducky.

Re: The hardest part of being a junior developer

#19

Post by kiachnish »

As a fresh grad SWE I have felt this insecurity as well. "Seven Tips for a Junior Developer" [0] has some good parts on asking for help, and on the pendulum between unblocking yourself versus reaching out to others. I would love to read anything else on the topic.

[0] https://www.pearlleff.com/seven-tips-for-a-junior-developer

Re: The hardest part of being a junior developer

#20

Post by sshine »

cke wrote: post #6

This one hits home for me. Early on in my career, I had a "mentor" tell me to try it on my own before asking any questions only to swear under his breath when I messed up. It was a massive source of anxiety balancing between asking a question and the risk of messing up. When working with junior engineers nowadays, I go out of my way to let them know that any question at any time is acceptable. I'll put down what I'm…

I had a hard case of impostor syndrome at my first full-time job and spent an unnecessary amount of time being stuck because I was too scared to ask.

I make sure that anyone in my office who is new or is my junior knows that I’m the person they can always interrupt. People never interrupt too much.

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