Junior Developers Questions Are Not Dumb

Often times we want junior developers to ‘empower’ themselves by Googling a question rather than constantly going to the Senior.

But (having once been a junior myself), one has to understand where these questions are coming from and why they are asking.

It is not always laziness (as we would like to think). Often times there is a real reason why they ask these questions and it is important to know why…

Terminology

Issue : One of the things I remember from my days of development over the last NEARLY 30 years is that often I was doing something that didn’t have a name LONG before it was given a name. So when looking it up, I didn’t know the proper ’terminology’.

And only the exceptional will not be afraid to say ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I don’t understand’. Often times, junior devs will already be doing something without even knowing they are using a pattern.

Solution : Try to see if they are hung-up on terminology. Ask them to explain/write out how they are approaching the problem; often times they are unaware of a pattern/functionality and talking/walking through it helps them to understand something that you took for common knowledge.

Documentation/Integration

Issue : How you implement as pattern/framework/tools can be ENTIRELY different from one org to the next.

And often, alot of dev questions come around how current devs implemented something.

This may be annoying BUT shows an underlying issue with documentation; one can point a dev to documentation and even force them to READ but if the documentation is poor (or their computer science background is lacking), they will not understand.

For me, these questions are VITAL as they provide a way to improve on documentation not only internally but for clients as well.

Solution : Poorly documented SDK’s and tools lead to the vast majority of questions from developers and improving them with examples, pictures and clear/precise ways of implementing can reduce a large majority of questions and ease onboarding.

Unknown Libraries

Issue : Having worked in Java for years now, I know that I will NEVER be abl to know/learn every library that exists. And there are often 3 different libraries and tools for everything you need to do.

Senior devs are all specialists in a companies platform and normally have researched the libraries they use prior to integrating and developing with them.

Junior devs dont have this info, they only have the basics… like when to use a Set vs a LinkedList.

Solution : Explain what you already know and why you made the decisions. Often times this will help them get over their hump and understand the tools better. In this case, a senior dev has all the info and the junior is merely trying to understand and create a ‘big picture’ of the application and infrastructure.

Conclusion

These are just a few of the more common reasons why most senior devs get questions. If you can think of others, please provide them in the comments…