Ask HN: Lack of quality Junior Developers? Bad luck or an industry issue?
Now, I will say I have (what I think) are realistic expectations about what a Junior Developer is - little or no commercial experience and with often significant yet understandable (and forgivable) holes in knowledge.
However, the (majority of) Juniors that I have worked with of late seem to really lack a) common sense, b) problem solving ability, and c) curiosity to learn.
I have one Junior at the moment who literally copies and pastes every error message in the console and Slacks the whole chunk to me. No context. And waits for a reply. Sadly, this mentality seems to be more common than not. My default response to this is now that 'you can work this out for yourself' (am I being too harsh?).
Have I just had bad luck? Is there a general lack of good quality Junior Developers, or do I have unrealistic expectations of what a Junior is these days? Is this because of the fast-track nature of these bootcamps, or maybe even the "framework" culture that means you don't really need to understand what's going on under the hood most the time?
Would love to hear thoughts. I'm really keen to help Juniors, but I can't help but look back at when I was one and compare my peers ability to figure things out for themselves (is that not how you _really_ learn?).