Comment by shortrounddev2
2 years ago
I am the same way with my coworkers. I spend a lot of time helping juniors with their code and doing code review. My boss talked to me and told me to stop helping out so much and focus on my own tickets.
2 years ago
I am the same way with my coworkers. I spend a lot of time helping juniors with their code and doing code review. My boss talked to me and told me to stop helping out so much and focus on my own tickets.
That’s good feedback I think.
There’s an article that was going around again about ‘glue work’ ([1]) that has a story where an engineer gets caught up doing all this kind of mentoring, coordination and other work like that and then is passed over for promotions because they don’t have technical achievements (though they claim to have become instrumental in enabling everyone else’s technical achievements).
The article never gets to quite the right conclusion - it’s actually massive management failure - what I was thinking the whole way through was “why hasn’t somebody sat them down and told them to do their actual job??”
Mentoring and code review are both super important, but if the organisation wants you to focus on getting tickets done then you basically just have to, unless you can convince them to actually add the additional work to your actual role description or get enough seniority to add it yourself.
But it’s good to have feedback on what kind of work you’re actually going to be measured on in performance reviews, promotions etc.
1. https://noidea.dog/glue
If you're a senior engineer, mentoring junior engineers IS your actual job, in addition to the coding work. It's arguably the more important part of your job description because junior engineers write most of the code, so you get far more done via mentoring than you do typing on a keyboard
I think this is an important perspective - in the end you need to do what the company asks of you and not what you think is right for the company if the two are in conflict.
The approach the company I work for has taken, is that leads and managers are primarily coders.
I think this makes sense especially for smaller companies, but it does put a extra emphasis on hiring well. Basically, I'm expected to code and helping my team is secondary to that. If I want the team to succeed I need to hire people who are self motivated and competent enough that they only require a little guidance here and there.
Turns out that's very difficult to hire consistently for. Finding self motivated and highly skilled developers just isn't all that easy in todays climate of boot campers.
It’s a balance. Sometimes it is worth spending a ton of time leveling up your team (teaching them to fish), and sometimes it’s much more helpful to have you do the work yourself (we ran out of food and you’re our best fisherman).
I get why people say this but let's be real. You optimize for the review cycle. If I'm told not to help as much I'm dropping it down until I'm told to help more. Then I'll correct the minimal amount necessary.