Comment by austincheney | Hacker News Reader

Comment by austincheney | Hacker News Reader

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The presumption about the junior level role is accurate but for reasons different than what you are thinking. It’s less about the work and more about the people.

Some junior developers have the potential to be great senior developers. They listen to mentorship and independently weigh decision criteria.

Many juniors don’t have this potential and some shouldn’t even be there in the first place. The need for recognition, entitlement, and fear of challenges are common behaviors that are anti-thetical to becoming a senior. In the extreme shitty juniors will become hostile when they feel threatened. It is easy to feel threatened when a good senior can output superior quality work in a fifth of the time.

Why would any competent person want to deal with that immaturity and insecurity? That kind of stupidity doesn’t just make me want to leave the job. It makes me want to abandon the career. You have to understand the senior person isn’t there to attack anybody or take anybodys job. They just don’t want to play the defensive survival games their peers may not realize they are playing.

If it weren’t for the people a junior role wouldn’t be so bad. A strong senior will find a way to shape it into something better, or will learn to manipulate things until large amounts of free time are exposed.

I take it you've worked with some junior engineers that brought neither the social nor the technical skill to their role.

Instead of considering them to be "so bad", an adept senior would work to develop these people. As a senior, use your social acuity, and bring your emotional intelligence to the table. If your juniors feel threatened, talk about it. Assuage their fears -- point out where they are doing well, and where they can improve. Work through the difficult problems, most likely individually, but through team retrospectives too (when appropriate-- never give individual feedback in a group setting).

This sounds like the approach is to avoid juniors as much as possible. And it's challenging to foster a high-performing team environment if that's the mindset one employs going into it.

I am a big fan of mentoring by tough love. Unfortunately, many juniors stop at tough. I can understand frustration and the anxiety that comes with unfamiliar challenges. What I don't understand is the constant desire for recognition or needing to be right like a simple decision is a battle for dominance.

I am all about mentoring people, but I do not savor working in an adult day care. The difference is whether the junior takes honest feedback and accept challenges or whether the junior wants immediate gratification. That distinction really comes down to personality and the wrong personalities are a real downer.

When you put “sensitive people make me sad” In your HN profile it debases your point of view.

I am ok with that for reasons sensitive people cannot accept.

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