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The hardest part of being a junior developer

rachsmith.com

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Re: The hardest part of being a junior developer

#81

Post by Justsignedup »

bob1029 wrote: post #26
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…

I have an additional trick - If you are the person of whom help is frequently asked, employ a nominal delay before you get into it. "Sure - let's get on in 5 minutes" I've found this to work well. "hang on I'm going to try 1 more thing". And, then you don't hear from them until tomorrow.

brilliant idea. i will use this

Re: The hardest part of being a junior developer

#82

Post by bcrl »

nopmike wrote: post #44
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…

> "X is your mentor. X's main job is to mentor you and help you swim in this deep end." I don't think that will ever happen, nor should it. No ones main job should be to mentor someone else. The best teams all help each other. Early and often.

A good work environment will see only good from developers asking each other questions to gain a better understanding of the complex systems being worked on. I was pretty senior in one of my last few roles, and I regularly asked questions of the folks that had been building the system before me. And I always made time to support other devs (and QA and support folks) that came to ask me questions, be it about code I wrote, general questions about technical things or whatever. Being supportive to each other is what made it a really fun place to work at.
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