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I have a junior who really drives me up a wall. He's been a junior for a couple of years now (since he started as an intern here).
He always looks for the quickest, cheapest, easiest solution he can possibly think of to all his tickets. Most of it pretty much just involves copy/pasting code that has similar functionality from elsewhere in the application, tweaking some variable names and calling it a day. And I mean, I'm not knocking copy/paste solutions at all, because that's a perfectly valid way of learning certain things, provided that one actually analyzes the code they are cloning, and actually modifies it in a way that solves the problem, and can potentially extend the ability to reuse the original code. This is rarely the case with this guy.
I've tried to gently encourage this person to take their time with things, and really put some thought into design with his solutions instead of rushing to finish; because ultimately all the time he spends on reworks could have been spent on doing it right the first time. Problem is, this guy is very stubborn, and gets very defensive when any sort of insinuation is made that he needs to improve on something. My advice to actually spend time analyzing how an interface was used, or how an extension method can be further extended before trying to brute-force your way through the problem seems to fall on deaf ears.
I always like to include my juniors on my pull requests; even though I pretty much have all final say in what gets merged, I like to encourage not only all devs be given thoughtful, constructive criticism, regardless of "rank" but also give them the opportunity to see how others write code and learn by asking questions, and analyzing why I approached the problem the way I did. It seems like this dev consistently uses this opportunity to get in as many public digs as he can on my work by going for the low-hanging fruit: "whitespace", "add comments, this code isn't self-documenting", and "an if/else here is more readable and consistent with this file than a ternary statement". Like dude, c'mon. Can you at least analyze the logic and see if it's sound? or perhaps offer a better way of doing something, or ask if the way I did something really makes sense?
Mid-Year reviews are due this week; I'm really struggling to find any way to document any sort of progress he's made. Once in a great while, he does surprise me and prove that he's capable of figuring out how something works and manage to use the mechanisms properly to solve a problem. At the very least he's productive (in terms of always working on assigned work). And because of this, he's likely safe from losing his job because the company considers him cheap labor. He is very underpaid, but also very under-qualified.
He's my most problematic junior; worst part is, he only has a job because of me: I wanted to give the benefit of the doubt when my boss asked me if we should extend an offer, as I thought it was only fair to give the opportunity to grow and prove himself like I was given. But I'm also starting to toe the line of being a good mentor by giving opportunities to learn, and falling behind on work because I could have just done it myself in a fraction of the time.
I hate managing people. I miss the days of code + spotify for 10 hours a day then going home.11 -
Applying for jobs
Apply for anything that looks like I have any kind of shot
Get reply from one company
"Hi. What is your salary expectation?"
"x"
Nothing for 6 days
Reach out again "Hi. I'm guessing you've gone with someone else as I've heard nothing back"
"No your salary expectation was a bit high"
"Okay well, what are you offering"
"47% of X as this is a junior position"
Like...
Firstly, X is what I was making at my last job
Secondly, you can see how much experience I have. You know I'm gonna be asking for 2-3 year money not intern money.
Thirdly, all they had to do after my first email was reply with "That's bit much, here's what we can offer, are you still interested?"
So yea, in general, I hate the salary expectation question. I don't want to sell myself short but I'm also currently in the take what I get position. So if you ask me, I'm gonna tell you what I was last making. I think that was a reasonable number and I know everyone has been hit by the pandemic so I'm not asking for more.
Just advertise jobs with a damn salary range.
You know which jobs do have a salary range? The senior positions. You know who does know how to negotiate? Seniors15 -
In my company there is a weekly employee benefit that each employee can get. The advantage is not carry over to next week if you don't take it the current week.
There is a junior in my department who is not taking a weekly benefit. I am sure he know about the weekly benefit because I have explain it to him before.
I said to him if he is not taking his portion of weekly benefit , can I take his instead? I explicitly said it to him that he can said "No" if he wanted and he don't need to consider the junior-senior relationship since I was mentoring him.
He said "I can take his portion if I want".
I know I got his permission but he is a quiet and reserved person (nothing wrong with it) , I am a reserved person myself.
I have to initiate a conversation and give him a chance to speak up like "What do you think about ... ? " , "X,do you think it is a good idea to ..." ,
My question is that does my junior give his permission to take him weekly benefit because he is a reserved person and doesn't like to tell "No".
What do you guy think?18
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