Raising Junior

Recently, many companies began to open vacancies for young inexperienced programmers. Honestly, I think this is great, because getting a job without experience is quite difficult in most industries. However, when hiring a Junior you must understand that you have a certain responsibility, in fact, you become a mentor of this person, and not every leader or team leader is aware of this responsibility.
In this article, I want to talk about whether you really need a novice developer and how to build a relationship with him.
To begin with, let's determine who Junior is. Novice programmers are different, we will take a young man who is not stupid, only after graduation, he knows the programming language we need, he has behind him several small independent projectors and, most importantly, there is a desire to study further.

Do you need it?

When you take Junior to the team, you must be clearly aware of why and why you are taking him. I do not consider the option when an experienced team leader feels within himself the strength and desire to help the young generation of programmers by sharing his experience. It's fine! But I have not seen this. The most common case - Junior is cheaper. If this is your case, give up this idea. Just lose time and money. A junior is cheaper for a reason, he needs to take time, he needs to explain something, send him on the right track, give tips, be sure to watch his code. And all this takes the time of more experienced programmers, which is very cheap.
Juniors are an investment in the future. This is an opportunity to grow and educate such a programmer as you need. Today it takes your time, tomorrow it makes a profit. Ask yourself: can you wait until tomorrow?

Tasks to Junior.

Often they take Junior to the company, and load up with boring uninteresting work, which no one else wants to do. Of course, he and Junior need to grow up to interesting and difficult tasks, but there is a great temptation to throw everything at the poor thing! It is important to remember that Junior needs to learn something. Throw him sometimes interesting, complex, non-standard tasks, the main thing is that they would not be critical in terms of time.
Control his work. And not the result, but the process. You will save time both for yourself and him, if you notice in a timely manner that he is digging in the wrong direction. And again, don't overdo it. Do not give him ready-made solution algorithms, it is clear that you know them, for that you are a team leader, give him a hint or advice, direct him in the right direction, but do not do the work for him, otherwise he will not learn anything.

A bit of rigor.

In the previous paragraphs, you might have the impression that Junior needs to be cared for and cherished, giving up everything when he has a problem. It is not, a little rigor will never hurt. Junior's very popular disease is student syndrome. It is important to immediately make it clear that this is no longer an institution, here you can’t oversleep the first couple, and leave with the third. One cannot help but come to work only because in the morning he got up on the wrong foot.
Also, you should not be allowed to yank yourself for any reason. Juniors sometimes sit on their heads, coordinating with the team lead every line of their code. You should be aware of what and how it does, but you should not know its code thoroughly, otherwise you risk getting the eternal Junior, who will not write a line after five years without prior approval.
Another popular problem is megalomania. Reaching a certain level, some Juniors decide that they are now a Guru, and God forbid, tell him that his method is wrong, and everything needs to be done differently. It is important here not only to indicate an implementation error, but also to explain why his method is incorrect and what problems such an implementation brings.

We taught him, and this ungrateful one left.

Returning to the question of the opportunity to save, hiring a Junior. The level of the young specialist is constantly growing, and accordingly, the salary should also grow. No need to complain about ungrateful humanity, if Junior has not had a pay increase for a hundred years. There is a popular opinion that the company pays the young specialist with knowledge. “We teach you, and pay extra.” That's bullshit. If a person brings benefits to the company, the company must pay for it, and the more benefits, the higher the salary. No need to think that the Junior is the kind of person who will always work for you, out of a sense of gratitude. If another company offers your pupil substantially better conditions - he will leave ... and who would not leave?

Conclusion.

Of course, all that I wrote - works in an ideal world, but real life makes its own adjustments. You will not always come across smart Juniors capable of self-improvement. You will not always have enough time and patience to answer a bunch of banal questions. You need to be clearly aware that Juniors are not cheap labor, they are novice programmers who need to be trained, who need to spend time. You will need an incredible amount of patience. If you are not ready for this - do not mess. But if you do everything right, get a great programmer on the team. As for me - the game is worth the candle.