Ask HN: How do you expand skills of junior developers in your team?

[jsifalda]

Hey. I do i have junior developer in my team who is not expanding his skills... at least he seems to struggle with the same and basic channeges in JavaScript all the time. He is not finishing tasks in reasonable timeframe. He seems to be bored with basic and easier tasks, he wants to work on bigger chalenges. However, i cannot let him work on task for 3 days which could be finished by senior developer in 1 day max. Still i want to keep his happy. I am sending him a lot of related articles which should help him, answering every question he has but he is not making any progress.... What would you do?

Thanks for your tips in advance. George

[joshuagish]

I've seen 3 different kind of devs. The go-getter that figures it out on their own, the "tell me how to solve it" person who doesn't really want to be a dev, and the type you have to mentor. If your junior is type 2, you'll want to get rid of them because they won't grow.

As for type 3, you'll need to understand how they solve problems and use that to help them tackle their tasks. I've had devs that can't hold a lot of information in their brain so they have to map things out on paper before solving them. Documentation will help these a lot since they won't remember methods and how things interact. Some devs might not be that creative and they'll have a hard time figuring out how to count unique values in an array. For these, it's like muscle memory. They'll need a lot of handholding up front but eventually they'll be able to easy tasks with ease. Others are visual learners so you might have to do a lot of pair programming. A lot!!!

As for the bored portion, good luck. That's more of an entitlement issue that you'll have to navigate on your own.

[verdverm]

Repeatedly struggling with basic tasks is a warning sign. I'd have this individual write docs / walkthrough to reinforce. If the issue persists, time to move on.

For learning new skills, 10% time working with new tech / tasks.

Why can you not let him spend the three days?

[jsifalda]

We are quite small team (3members), he can make progress with easier and smaller tasks intead of getting stuck on one thing for 3 days without guarantee it will be finished and working at the end

[verdverm]

Junior developers need time and mentoring. Either expectations need to change or you really want a non junior developer.

If the individual is not able to do the learn the basics tasks, you may need to revisit their employment and possibly your hiring process

[jsifalda]

we have been short of developers so the hiring process was literally "we wants you"... so hiring process is not the thing... i want him to get better not to be thinking about anybody else at least for now.