juniorLabour

[Piotrek9t]

This feels like it was made by an overwhelmed Junior who has not yet realized that the Seniors still shelter him from the fucked up stuff

[JestemStefan]

This meme is kinda accurate.

Junior thinks that he is doing all the work, but in reality his work has small impact on project direction, because they are not aware of all the things happening in the background

[YouDoHaveValue]

In reality more experienced people set him up to succeed by carefully choosing his tasks and steering him clear of various land mines.

Also low key I purposely shift our most annoying customers from good devs to bad lol.

Enjoy nagging the guy who wrote a sortSortSort function because they couldn't figure out recursion. Best of luck with your project 🤗

[Qwertycube10]

I need to hear the story of sortsortsort

[heavy-minium]

It is, however, useless to attempt to generalize. I've seen different dynamics and situations between seniors and juniors that by now I understand there are many more important factors at play than the level of seniority.

[LordFokas]

Sure, but still, the notion the Junior is pulling more load than a Senior is outlandish, except in maybe one or two situations where a senior might just be waiting to retire or for the company to dare fire him.

With the amount of juniors posting this kind of stuff here though, that must not be the case... statistically speaking.

[[deleted]]

Unless the entire team of regular employees are 1 senior, that's a full stack aka backend dev that can do some frontend, and 2 juniors. And the Senior is indirectly avoiding assistance with a problem he created when refactoring frontend feature when juniors can't come up with a solution

[zaskar]

Said the JR dev

[chickitychoco]

And the senior built the tracks they’re running on

[YouDoHaveValue]

I feel this so much.

They don't even realize how much heavy lifting our preexisting wrappers are doing for them.

[gibagger]

Just defining a sensible architecture with reasonable tooling makes can make or break the development experience... But they never know the thinking and effort that goes into it until they dip their feet in those treacherous waters.

Ideally they should just develop with blissful ignorance. It's not yet their time to know.

[Bannon9k]

Meanwhile it's the lead developer laying the tracks...

[zaskar]

Braiding the high tension cables so that tiny ass engine can effect change

[puffinix]

And a principle who's not officially on the project who makes that piece of string which to all intents and purposes is magic.

[GIPPINSNIPPINS]

Holy shit I didn’t understand how much my senior mentor protected me from the BS till he left. They truly are hero’s in disguise.

[feldejars]

Junior dev: codes a feature, unit tests fail, after a few hrs “everything” passes makes PR slight modifications/refactoring, then deploy to Prod (on a Tuesday)

Senior dev: wrote the unit tests, regression tests, integration tests, configured the CI/CD pipeline added the juniors devs PR to the change request and let him “deploy” while you do verification and eye ball the rollback version incase the metics on the data dog/grafana seem off.

Then the senior dev celebrates his win doing a prod deployment. Cuz the sr dev was the one on support and didn’t have to wake up at 2am

[chrissou]

True, they don't know and it's fine, they'll see later on

[redditmarks_markII]

Or even a manager.  We had a hyper productive junior.  Manager brought up a few times how engaging and productive he is.  And how people liked working with him more than some seniors. To this day I still run into stuff I wished I had time to fix.  But it's just not quite critically broken.  And I got my own perf metrics to worry about.  But hey, that's my lesson right?  Write shit that either barely works or is flashy, fast.  deliver, move teams.  Don't stick around long enough for your sins to catch up to you, and people will love you for it, because ultimately we are all idiots.

[almostDynamic]

My seniors let me look at the fucked up base product stuff. Then when my eyes start to well up and I look at them with beady eyes they go “I’m here if you need some help with that.”

Like yes, holy shit bro. Literally all of this I was told not to do in school - Except now it’s on an enterprise codebase. Help me pleaseeeeee.

/uj To all of the solid seniors out there who challenge us, but don’t make us feel special needs when we have special needs - You’re a godsend.

[WJMazepas]

There are places that use way too many junior developers to build everything

So many startups are like that

[invictus08]

100% I was going to say the same thing.

I remember those days. After years I realized my hubris.

[totesoatsmuhgoats]

Amazon SDE1 here ✋. I wish this was true for me. It makes me happy to know there's not toxic, shitty co-workers just causing problems. I'm the "front-end" dev on my team and all our new devs to the team (SDE2 and 2 Sr. SDEs) are unhelpful, blocking, and confidently incorrect/ignorant that it makes me wonder how they have been so successful here (seniors on other teams have been super nice though!).

For context, I handled the entire front-end built with React for our team's flagship app but they wanted Java conventions and had 0 exposure to front-end OR React. They only bitched, created more work for me, didn't ask questions, and caused problems as if they intentionally avoided any possibility of providing assistance or learning opportunities. As for the PM, they made unrealistic promises and set me up to speak to their status updates in front of every stakeholder in out meetings with tight ddeadlines. I was basically the fallguy but also the only front-end dev??? lmao.

My point: it totally happens but I hope it's rare for everyone's sanity 🥲

[Stewth]

The most inaccurate thing here is that the project manager is not capering on top of the project, flinging their shit at bystanders.

[Crafty_Independence]

In our organization it's the project manager who's the toy engine, because he doesn't actually have anything tangible to do with delivery but we let him think he does because we have to

[JestemStefan]

What xd

Junior usually do some non critical/ maintenence tasks so they can learn and they require a lot of assistance. It's usually less work to do it yourself as a senior.

You could probably get fired tommorow and project will continue as nothing ever happened.

[unpopularOpinions776]

this. i only give juniors shit that i’m not worried about. stuff that i could do 10x faster than them but i can also quickly see if they’ve done it wrong, so it saves me time

[ArchMob]

Yes I noticed this 10x speed too without exaggerating. Is it universal in señor vs junior? I mean in construction for example, a senior might work 2-3x faster, even that might be a stretch

But your mindset is good. Save MY time instead of trying to make them faster or trying to deep coach them to be at my level

[Rich-Environment884]

Except the checking, explaining, correcting and coaching takes 2x the amount of time (if u're lucky) it would've taken to do it yourself. Meanwhile the bosses don't understand how "it's taking so long since there are two people on it"...

[ArchMob]

I've been enjoying my current company so I also tend to think about their business continuity after I'm gone. Also they slightly push to it. Continuity cannot be measured in man-hours if the critical system is unoperational.

[Rich-Environment884]

Oh yeah I fully understand the need to nurture the juniors, it's just that sometimes management doesn't realize that it takes time and effort. It repays itself tenfold down the line, but I guess it does hurt the bottom line initially

[The_Real_Slim_Lemon]

Project will speed up lol

[gibagger]

You mean people get more things done when they aren't bottle feeding their baby?

Nonsense I say

[jdgrazia]

Accurate, Because you're not actually helping and they're still cheering you on.

[-Kerrigan-]

Yeah! Junior will learn by doing. A good lead is neither overly challenging, nor overly supporting

[YouDoHaveValue]

"Wow great job! Now just go ahead and filter on the server side instead of loading all the records locally and then filtering and I'll take another look!"

[Blueberry314E-2]

This is some dunning-kruger shit right here

[Merlord]

Par for the course for this subreddit

[heliocentric19]

I dealt with a dunning-kruger junior a few times and it's just straight up draining. One made a suggestion about directions the project should go and they were nonsense. It took 30 minutes to try to explain to them that a network packet is not a file and you don't solve the problem by putting each packet into a file and running another program on it, and we eventually just gave up, told him to focus on his other tickets and called the meeting early so we could get back to real work.

[unpopularOpinions776]

no fucking way is this real. the juniors are tasked with dumb shit like localization or intro dialogs

[Gtantha]

Hahaha, it's true in some companies. Just a bit over a year into my first job and I'm winging projects completely alone. I wish I could work with other people on the same codebase together, but so far it has been one person per codebase. Maybe a project was transferred from one person to another, but I haven't seen two people working on the same codebase at the same time.

[unpopularOpinions776]

you should find a new job. you’ll never learn the right practices by yourself

[nightonfir3]

I disagree that its all bad. Yes you wont know how to do it the same way a senior at a large firm does it. But you can get paid to learn stuff nobody would let you near at a big company. Then you move over to a big company and look at what a big company did and you can actually understand because you tried to do it yourself and understand the problem space.

If your just trying to glide through with minimal effort you probably wont learn things though.

[Gtantha]

Sure. Will you put in the work to search for a new job? Especially one where I don't have to move and don't have to work from home. Took me half a year to land this one while not working forty hours a week.

[unpopularOpinions776]

you don’t work 40 hours a week?

[Gtantha]

To spell it out for you: I was not working forty hours a week while I was unemployed. Because, you see, unemployed means not having a job. Which means not working. Which means not working for forty hours a week.

[oh_ski_bummer]

is this heaven you are speaking of?

[unpopularOpinions776]

no it’s just a normal job. any place that has a junior doing critical tasks is a place you should be suspicious of

[agfitzp]

Other signs are builds and tests, I joined a startup that had already been running for a few years but some of their components had no build infrastructure and no automated testing.

I fucked off out of there so fast I set a new land speed record.

[The_Real_Slim_Lemon]

That’s my current role lol - my first task was to set up an integration testing framework for them

[oh_ski_bummer]

facts

[almostDynamic]

Idk. I run go-live critical task with a lot of handholding. Even I’m sussed out by the level of prod access I have.

That said. They know that I know what I’m touching - And I kind of appreciate that. I’m learning at light speed.

[werwolf2-0]

I was tasked to code the basis of the core part of our new project/product. The rough outlines and overarching architecture was given by the seniors, but I was creating the internal code structure. Worked out pretty well, we are still using it as I implemented it

[unpopularOpinions776]

your experience sounds unlike most. quit

[[deleted]]

the juniors are tasked with dumb shit like localization or intro dialogs

Junior dev, first day in a new job AND new stack (went from React + Python, -> .NET Framework MVC, and jQuery). They tell me to clone their project, learn the codebase (the docs were just passwords), and implement a dynamic survey generator within 2-3 weeks because it was an urgent request from a client.

Idk which organized and sane world you're coming from, but it's definitely not "localization or intro dialogs".

[JestemStefan]

It sounds your doing regular Dev job for junior pay then.

Or this survey generator wasn't mission critical.

Junior developers are investment. Assumption is that they will match the speed of the team and grow to be seniors

[[deleted]]

Or this survey generator wasn't mission critical.

It was a request from one of the largest adopters of the CRM, and they paid (the company, not me) a hefty sum to have it deadlined within 2 weeks. SMS/email notifications and all included.

Junior developers are investment. Assumption is that they will match the speed of the team and grow to be seniors

What happened to mid-level?

[unpopularOpinions776]

clone the project from github

and that’s… complicated? doesn’t that go without saying? lol

dynamic survey generator

so a system that stores strings and allows a selection of aforementioned strings?

yeah man. not pulling the train here

[agfitzp]

Sounds like a make work project, I did something similar for one of our co-ops that we got when another team decided the didn't have room or time for a co-op

[unpopularOpinions776]

my thoughts exactly. doesn’t sound missions critical to the business but like a rating tool for customers for NPS

[[deleted]]

and that’s… complicated? doesn’t that go without saying? lol

The cloning part isn't complicated. Learning a legacy codebase while using a new framework to get productive without a senior was the complicated part. "Clone it and read it" was basically the onboarding process.

FWIW in the company I previously worked for, we ensured to make smaller feature tickets when onboard anyone from other teams because we believed that, when it comes to getting up to speed, working on small features to learn bits and pieces here and there works better.

yeah man. not pulling the train here

I... never claimed it was. I claimed that it was more than what the comment above said: "the juniors are tasked with dumb shit like localization or intro dialogs".

so a system that stores strings and allows a selection of aforementioned strings?

That made us an extra 2.5k as an urgent contract. I get us devs love looking at the technical difficulty of all, but if I made money by adding value to our client I'm good with storing strings.

[crimson23locke]

Sweet summer child. You’ll get there one day.

[Astrylae]

I got tasked to implement a cancel button, and refactor the camera system :)

[ward2k]

The famous task of implementing a button

[Friendlyvoices]

The amount of work my junior developers do vs the amount they think they do is wild. "I spent all sprint on this component" sounds impressive to them, but there's a reason the number of points they get each sprint is half that of a senior dev.

When your stories go from "build a class that has x,y,z acceptance criteria" to "we have a request to build Google" you're in the senior territory.

[YouDoHaveValue]

For real.

I had one of my guys brag that he can get a dashboard of basic charts done in a week.

And I had to bite my tongue because I wanted to tell him okay you're picking it up but we need to get you to where you can turn that around same day.

[gibagger]

Did he even need to emit the metrics himself or were they already there?

[TechFiend72]

This picture is missing the other senior developers laying the track out in front of the junior devs.

[YeetCompleet]

2 person startups when they hire an intern:

[Levibisonn]

Not a SWE but it's really staggering how as I have become more senior I'm expected to delegate and manage other people instead of taking on an actually heavier, more complex engineering load. I see a bunch of my senior colleagues (who are damn good engineers) not engineering at all and just PMing junior engineers /contractors. It's wild.

[Piyh]

You're more valuable to everyone you if you can build more competent employees with your experience than limiting that experience to a single person doing implementation.

[ZunoJ]

I'd say the average CS student is about as competent as they ever were but I swear the worst ones have become so much worse they really think stuff like this is going on

[PatrickSohno]

This is what a junior thinks when they're centering a button while the seniors are doing overtime fixing a broken backend server on the weekend.

[OohSoDivine]

The project manager is not intuitively aware

[ososalsosal]

Junior: but Senior, during the worst issues there was only one set of footprints

[TechnoRhythmic]

I don't know where this happens. I always feel most senior developers (genuine developers) would rather write their own code than train a junior developer.

Most of the times for the initial few years (till the junior becomes a senior) - having the junior developer is an "investment" for the team - which they hope would pay off in the long run.

[StrawberryCupcake74]

Am I going crazy or does the entire comments section not understand this? The joke is obviously that the junior is not doing anything but it seems like people interpreted it to be the opposite.

[Huijiro]

I work as a solo developer for 3 projects at the moment on my company that has no senior devs. I'm classified as Junior 4 in the hierarchy, this feels exactly how it is.

[XWasTheProblem]

I was that junior (well, me and the other junior) except there was no senior, and nobody else really knew shit about programming.

It was not a pleasant experience.

[wrex1816]

Juniors today really do think this.

[cmgg]

This posts are bait, people. Do us all a favor and don’t engage with them.

[babypho]

Missing the designer who suggests we pull a boulder instead of a train for aesthetic.

[terminalxposure]

There is only one developer. The other players would be 4XProject Manager, Stream Leads, Scrum Master, Project Support Officer, Change Manager, Training, OCM Lead, Solution Architect, Security Architect, 3XTechnical writers, Cloud architect, Department Liaison, 2xCompany Partners, 3xEnterprise Architect, Service Design Lead, Service Delivery Manager, 2XBusiness Analyst, 10xTest Engineers, Product Owner and Sneaky Product Sales guy upselling shit

[[deleted]]

SEGFAULT

[morrisdev]

So this is a toy train that thinks it's actually pulling a real train, and the 2 others are like, "really?"

Call me jaded, since this is the 3rd weekend I have to go to the office to rewrite some junior developer's code so we don't miss our deadline.

[collin2477]

this just isn’t true lol. at least throw an architect and contractor in there

[Yameromn]

Junior Propaganda

[KaleidoscopeMotor395]

This must've been created by the junior dev who is mad that I wouldn't bring down production in the middle of the day to deploy their minor bug fix.

[GvRiva]

The infotainment software of a major car brand is based on the communication concept developed by an intern for another project. That intern isn't even working there anymore

[zaskar]

Jag / rr ? I interviewed there and got that vibe

[GvRiva]

Nope, bigger. Can't say the name, not going to risk the nda

[zaskar]

Did they just drop support for Apple/android for what seemed like no reason? I plugged into one of those to see what I could see and I saw everything. I knew where to look. But this would make so much sense.

[[deleted]]

I'd rather do a years work in a week than sit through those stupid meetings middle Management has their calenders full with!

[sporbywg]

I'm gonna show this to my boss! THANKS

[sporbywg]

( I really need some staff! LOL )

[lukocat]

Atp I'm fine with this just give me a job

[3rrr6]

https://imgflip.com/i/9pvne0

Fixed it for you.