TOP STRUGGLES Of Junior Developers And Interns

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all right it is Tuesday the 20 something of January 21st um got a question from the comments that I think's a really good one that'll help other folks so excited to answer it here uh it's just like it's the coldest day of the year which isn't saying much cuz it's early but I can't feel anything right now um which is embarrassing cuz I'm from Canada and uh all of my ability to tolerate cold is gone so was the first time I had to scrape my car this year at least but I guess like this winter season even but oh man um okay so the question from the comments is around uh most common things that like Juniors um and all you know kind of tie in interns and stuff like that that Junior developers uh struggle with when they're getting started sort of in the

workplace um and I the reason I'm excited to to answer this is because I think there's like a lot of uh a lot of opportunity to to get people started on the right foot so I'm hopeful that at least for this one person we can help um and then other people that are listening maybe it's a guidance for you or uh if you know someone else that's getting started or if you're onboarding people something to think about so if you have questions that you want to answer leave them in the comments or if you want to write uh something a little bit more detailed with more context look for Dev leader on social media send me a message on any platform and I'm happy to try and help um okay so with that said um a couple different angles to look at here and I've

talked about some of these before but um I'm going to make an assumption that a lot of people now are doing uh remote work and if not fully remote then hybrid this thing is going to be beeping all morning because there's Frost um the thing that I want to start looking at here uh is around like how being a remote from what I've observed actually makes it a little bit more challenging for people to onboard so in terms of what people struggle with right um I think that onboarding process is generally um something that when you're remote it's really difficult for people to feel connected um you know you can say unlimited times to to people that are getting started hey like don't hesitate to reach out for help team's here to help you uh you can assign them onboarding buddies all of these things

are good and I recommend that you do do them but it seems like depending on people's personality types um some will be very hesitant to still reach out um I think that and like I wish I'm as I'm saying this I'm just kind of thinking I don't really have like a solution for this still um it's something I'm working on but I I wanted to share it because it's like it it may the solution that like that we need to look for maybe is more situational and it's not just like a universal solution um but I wanted to bring some awareness to this because like I said no matter how many times I try to tell people that are new um whether they're interns Juniors uh like don't hesitate to reach out for help the individuals that I've seen they might start at the same

time let's say and I see individuals Excel when they're the ones asking questions so they're like you know they're not afraid to just reach out and say like hey I'm stuck on this or hey I want to know how this works can someone explain this to me um I think that some people look at this like either I mean it can be any motivation right like maybe I'm too shy maybe I don't want to bother people maybe I don't want to uh I don't want to come across as like dumb because I'm asking questions but like it's I I'm just trying to say this because it's the complete opposite um I actually had uh my my own manager who is like he's he's pretty high level um he saw and we were talking about this he was talking to me about one of the new

team members who was asking a question in one of our chats and he when we were having our oneon-one he was like by the way he's like was that so and so he was like that was one of the most like thoughtful like uh like detailed questions that he's like that I've like ever seen from like a you know like a newer person on the team he was like they really demonstrated that like that they're like piecing together things but even so like they were asking a question right so I just wanted to say this out loud because it's an example of asking a question and still was proving to someone else like hey you must really have an idea of like of some understanding of this stuff or else he wouldn't have even been able to compose that so it's like you don't have

to be fearful of asking questions and like not knowing things it's totally fine um that might be like arguably the biggest thing that I see people struggle with though so please um if you're on boarding somewhere and it's remote um even if it's in person you know keep this in mind but I I have found that in my experience in person just seems to be a little bit easier and I don't know if it's because there's like a for the individuals that have to ask questions there's less of a barrier like I can literally see the person um and they might they might notice like some of my body language they might notice that I'm like uh slumped over at my desk and like kind of looks like I'm struggling or something so then we get unblocked but you know I just I don't know

like I said I I don't have a better way to than to say please just make sure that you're asking for help and getting your stuff unblock or yourself unblocked um people want to help you they want you to be up and running they want to get you to be part like an effective part of the team and they will spend time helping you so don't don't worry that you're bothering them uh that you're slow that like because everyone starts that way everyone starts needing to ask questions being slow and like the way that you get better and the way that you get better faster is by asking those questions okay so that's a lot of uh rambling about that but I hope you understand that I think it's important uh next I would say is that cuz I think this question was also for

like people that haven't actually built stuff before too uh which is I feel like it's becoming more rare like that people are actually spending time not just uh I don't know like doing stuff if they had like assignments in school necessarily or like an assignment from a boot camp maybe being more creative and doing something outside of uh outside of those things having your own projects that you're working on but the question kind of included like for people that don't really have experience building things and something that I wanted to mention was I think that um I've seen people struggle with like and it's I don't know I feel like it's actually less common now but I wanted to bring it up in case it sounds like you uh I've seen people that focus on like when they've been in school or they've been learning

about coding they a lot of the time we're exposed to like what seems to be picture perfect patterns like here's how a repository pattern works or here's how you would architect something or here's like you know a clear snap snapshot of how we Define something in software development and then what happens is that in practice almost nothing looks like the like the textbook right so to speak it's not it's never perfect it's never the exact same I shouldn't say never but it's rarely um and then I I find that some people get um really caught up on this like then as a result the code they're working on never seems ready so I have had people struggle with like trying to get like perfect code which is kind of funny because like No Such Thing exists this is more common I find with people that

are very highly educated so people and I'm generalizing here so please don't uh assume that I'm just making a rule of thumb and it's is the law now but I've noticed in my own experience people with uh Masters in computer science or like phds um they've spent and this is just my assumption they've spent more time talking about theory in programming that the actual Hands-On part ends up lagging behind and at the end of the day like we have to ship software that works and software that works does not necessarily mean that it is air quotes perfect software in terms of how it looks so uh I've definitely seen people struggle with that uh I've seen then people struggle with like the opposite of like and this one's probably more common and when I say struggle I feel like this one is like you learn

it pretty quick which is good news and it's going to change from Team to team like like your first PLL request that you do with your team or your first code review is probably going to be pretty rough right and that's okay like you're going to have you're probably going to have a lot of comments a lot of feedback um if you've never if like you're brand new to this stuff that might feel kind of jarring like holy crap like I thought I was an okay programmer why do I have so many comments here um but for some people like I guess the first part of this is that they might struggle with knowing when code is done and ready to be reviewed so what this can look like is that you're you get something working you kind of run it on your your computer

or in whatever sort of test that your team might use and you go okay like this works I'm going to I'm going to get it reviewed now and then um you put it up for review and then someone like you basically have team members that start it feels like they're tearing you apart but really they're just like hey like this is this is a coding convention we use or like hey this this won't work exactly blah blah blah to start getting this feedback um and then someone's like oh by the way like you missed writing tests for this and I have to go write tests um and then so you do all this stuff and like the experience feels pretty daunting the good news is by the way it gets like very like significantly faster over time just once you're aligned to a lot of

the team things but then what happens is the next time when you want to go put something up for review sometimes people over index the other way and they're like well I never want to have that experience happen again which like part of that's good like you're you're trying to learn from the first one but when it goes too far the other way then it's like are you just spending time now like potentially being wasteful because you're almost like afraid to put it up for review um so I've seen people like sit on stuff and not get it up for review for too long so something to think about you know there's nothing wrong like I've had situations where people put up like a an early design and it's like the PO request is absolutely not ready to be submitted but they're like it's a

draft poll request like how does this idea look like there's different ways you can use the tooling and different teams will use it different ways so uh my point here is just like trying to find that sweet spot for like when it's good to have eyes on a code review um can take some time um what else uh I think when you're actually getting assigned work sometimes people find it difficult to like scope that work and this is kind of like often it's uh the team it's kind of at fault here because if they're used to working a certain way you know they might have really light details in some of like the your jira items your your different work items that you're using in your tracking systems and but it's like it's enough that people on the team can get by they're like oh

yeah like I know actually what this means like what this bug is or or or what this features like talking about I know who to go talk to now and then when you have a new person on the team they can struggle with this kind of stuff because like they're not embedded in the culture yet right they they don't have the experience on the team and they might struggle with being like you know this work item is just the title like where do I start and then kind of going back to what I said earlier is like sometimes they're they're afraid to ask because it's like I mean this is the detail I was provided am I going to look stupid for asking like so people hesitate but it's just like this kind of goes both ways that uh like we need to do better

at sort of uh explaining work to people that are new and hopefully they continue to ask questions but I've seen that be a struggle um one thing that's really common I find is like uh timelines so and I just want to explain this a little bit um sorry I'm trying to pass a truck and it was beeping at me but no one was coming into my lane so um with timelines depending on where you work like you might have like some type of agile implementation where um you have Sprints or you have things that like are supposed to fit in with this within a certain boundary um and it's pretty common and like usually most places will make it uh known to you like the expectation for your work as a junior or a brand new hire like they expect it's going to take a

little bit longer this is kind of how things go um but I have found that uh the Juniors around timelines actually do need a little bit of micromanagement and it's it's actually challenging for me because I'm very against micromanaging in general like I like to give people full autonomy I like to step away give them their space uh make it like a good like a comfortable space for them to ask questions um comfortable place for them to fail right like if they try something and it doesn't work they're not feeling like oh I'm going to get fired because of this so like it should feel safe that you can do good work and if you have questions ask them but otherwise like I trust you um and you know if you mess up that's okay we'll we'll figure it out together and then learn from

it so I don't like micromanaging because I think that it's like it always like I've never seen a situation where it doesn't backfire and slow people down and demotivate them and disengage them but I've actually noticed and had conversations especially with interns um around timelines and my experience has been that either uh I've had interns that are very like uh like super effective on their own and they're the ones that are reaching out for help getting unblocked and stuff and they're just like really really into it and then the others that I was talking about that are more disengaged or like kind of nervous to ask questions um I found that those individuals we actually uh we work better when they're a little bit more micromanaged and I think that's for a couple reasons and by the way this is us having conversations about it

and me getting the feedback from them that they want like a more Hands-On uh kind of check in right so one I think is that it's more touch points to be able to ask questions it's kind of like it's not forced but like Hey we're going to be talking anyway and then someone's like go by the way by the way I had a question about this it's like okay like this is good um but the other part is that around timelines and this is the part I was trying to to Really drive home here is um this is one of the first times aside from like School assignments where you have some timeline for the thing that you're building cuz even if you were just building hobby projects well what's the timeline for it it's like well it's a hobby whenever you get around to

it you'll keep making progress but what happens when you're working in a business is like we need to keep things moving um we need to be delivering value to customers so it's not like you have unlimited time to go work on something write the most perfect code and maybe it took you seven months um like we you just don't have that luxury um but then I find that Juniors don't really have and I'm not blaming them they don't have a concept of how long things should take so when I go a little bit more Hands-On with them and a little bit more micromanaging uh so we're checking in more frequently we're setting some smaller Milestones they actually find that like that really helps shape their their deliverables um so if you are someone that's like very Junior right um or you in this person's case

like kind of prepping for their for full-time work what I would say is like keep this in mind that my observation is that people struggle with uh just having an idea of timelines like am I staying on track am I am I falling behind expectations on this stuff most people that I work with when they're just starting out fall into this category so it's not wrong or bad if you feel this way you're like I just don't know on my timelines um sometimes this takes a little while for you to figure out not only like how effectively you work but you're also learning a code base and tooling and domain um like there's a whole lot of moving pieces when you're getting started so don't uh I don't know like don't feel bad if you have questions on that so I think those are some

of the things that come to mind I'm just getting to the the CrossFit gym here you got to find a spot to park um but I think that's kind of like how I would frame some of this up um it's not my experience it's not like the programming languages like people learn them they'll learn the text Stacks uh yes one parking spot left okay um it's really about some of the processes and things like that so hope that helps uh let me know if you have other questions leave in the comments or send a message to Dev leader and I'll see you next time take care