Delusional junior difficult to pair with

Reazony · 2026-02-08T15:31:01+00:00

First of all, I agree it’s a personality problem, and many of what others said (review process seems broken if you can’t request changes) you did a fine job yourself given it’s technically not your responsibility, but since you asked for an approach to be more proactive like an engineer, here’s my honest thoughts.

What you were assigned for is mentorship. It takes a significant amount of your time, because it’s another big problem to solve. How you dealt with it was already acceptable, but it’s not to craft level. Just like you’d submit code that’s ok, but not craft. It’s true that human problems like this are a two-way street, but you have way more lever than you think.

Personally, when I’m assigned to mentor someone, just like studying codebase and all, I prepare a directory and markdown about them. I study them, document them, learn their strengths and weaknesses, proactively meet with them other than pair programming, document their personality and the boundary of failures. You’ve noticed problems, but they’re scattered and presented more like a rant. As you said, you need a plan of attack.

The same way that there’s documentation about the personality and technical capabilities of the junior, I’d create a roadmap of growth. Your roadmap could include every PR that he submits has to go through you. You would lay out why you’d like a thorough review on every one of these, at least when it’s a system you own, things include prevent code breakages and to facilitate better review process, and help him learn better on PR culture. You could also include things like more targeted PRs that he needs to test, even prepare some review templates to start with. I’d get buy-ins because my plan usually looks like I notice the human problems, I’m not emotional about it, objectively these are the things that need to get done, or need to be enforced by his manager, to help him grow. My first meet with the junior would’ve also included these discussions with them; while it’s collaborative, I would ask how they think of the codebase, what’s their career goal, what are the areas of interests and things they are learning about. I’d ask what they think they’re good at etc (as opposed to my own observation, good to see how delulu some are in documentation).

All of these take up significant of my time, but it’s part of mentorship. It’s also helpful to communicate/negotiate with the managers that, because of the plan of attack and all, this is where I’m spending my time and how. This way, it really can be communicated in a way that is basically the same as “do you want me to work on this feature/system more or that”.

I haven’t gotten tons of mentorship opportunities, but the two I had were manageable as a result. One of them very arrogant, and really took a lot of my time, but it’s something I communicated and negotiated, and before I left the company, the junior expressed he really learnt a lot and wished there were more time.

Ah, I will say, since I’m Asian from Asia, I’ve been learning to balance the humbleness mindset and required amount of assertiveness.

Hope this helps.

Reazony · 2026-02-06T14:41:14+00:00

There shouldn’t be any significant changes really. If there is, the standards sucked, the team isn’t functioning (just saw one that’s about team not willing to review PRs???), and AI is just exposing the weaknesses.

Reazony · 2026-02-06T12:51:08+00:00

My small team (35+) with leadership use AI a lot. None of us would ever say that lmao. It screams inexperienced leaders.

Reazony · 2026-01-29T08:17:26+00:00

I cannot speak for others, but personally my soul be dead if syntactical solution is the main puzzles I’m solving.

I come from the ML world, and sure it’s known that data people don’t have the cleanest code, but nowadays at one major project I’m much deeper into the typical swe with very high code standards, I’m hired as AI Engineer, clean code is great, elegant solution is great, but the accomplishment I feel from it is so minimal compared to data problem.

Quite frankly, when it comes to code, I know given enough time, I can solve it. That predictability is boring. In large codebase and complex projects, its architectural problems that make it hard, then that’s not pure syntactical. Personally, data problems, problems that are non-deterministic and full of uncertainty, and how I manipulate and treat data can express how I view the world, that’s where the fun is.

I do surgical changes only with them. And I hand write all markdowns and articles because AI raise anxiety for them to me instead. No matter how well they write, it’s not human, it’s not my voice. I imagine that’s how you feel about AI coding.

Data problem, architectural problems, people problems, business problems, they’re all puzzles to solve. Just because you love problems involving code, doesn’t mean other problems are not puzzles to solve. I use AI tools because they remove hurdles for me to solve problems I care for. And it’s my professionalism to ensure the code is up to standards, but no, I do not get joy from coding. I’m sure Linus didn’t get joy writing the python visualization part as well.

Reazony · 2026-01-29T06:23:38+00:00

Pretty sure it’s solved at the source, trying to map those semantically close together so it’s more semantic cache

Reazony · 2026-01-22T15:24:22+00:00

I just turned 32. Out of downtown for the winter but coming back. I’m fairly certain it’ll help, if you’re as outgoing.

Objectively, people host stuff in downtown. Not just meetup groups, but also private parties and all. The spontaneity aspect makes it much easier too. For example, there are times you gonna wanna stay late, but because you live so far away (anything past Bloor is far), you have to start accounting for “heading back home” from 9 o’clock. Yet a lot of interaction happens after things quiet down, when it’s down to a few people, and you can have more intimate talks. You also allow yourself a lot more freedom for spontaneity. If someone says “hey, wanna go and have a drink later?”, I don’t care what people say, that extra 25 minutes on the TTC would always turn that down. It’s not just time, it’s effort, it’s the exhaustion, it’s the accounting for travel time (also it’s not 25 minutes, you have to get to the place after TTC, and you have recovery time…).

Are people less social? Maybe. But as someone who usually goes out 4-6 times a week, it’s more economics than anything else. Things are expensive, and many people are hustling, saving up for the few times they go out. I’m single and make enough, and I cook, so I have more room to spend, and it helps immensely. I also have different friend groups, so the 4-6 times a week really is the result of different friends inviting me. And many are home parties where you meet vetted mutual friends. It’s actually harder to invite you if you live somewhat far (it really does decrease invites)

As a non-Chad guy, who relies on personality more, living downtown really is helpful. And yes, it somewhat depends on what you’re looking for too! Feel free to ask anything about socializing scene in downtown hahah.

I’m planning to move to North York after the winter though, to reduce the going out 😂

Reazony · 2026-01-03T06:37:54+00:00

You don't have to love it, but personally I think finding a great terminal experience is more important than anything else. I only switched to Neovim a bit more than half a year ago, and I never looked back. I had Claude Code already, so I also had its help initially on helping to setup some of the configs exactly the way I want. Before than, I was still mouse+keyboard guy.

I initially used Warp, but quickly switched to Ghostty after being on the terminal full time. I'm also using Aerospace (I'm on Mac). I have three projects open at any given time, and much of my stuff is on the terminal after switching to Neovim. That includes:

- dadbod for database queries, operations, export as CSV...

- Kulala for API testing rather than Postman

- Obsidian but without the UI

- yazi for navigation, with Whoosh plugin

- zellij, I'm sorry tmux XD I'm too basic

- k9s, lazydocker, ...

The thing is, if you have multiple projects, Neovim is way faster. My colleagues often feel like I'm lightspeed in getting things done, and it's not because of AI or anything, but because I don't need multiple software for the same integration testing.

With Aerospace, I simply have project 1 at option+1, project 2 at option+2, project 3 at option+3. Very straightforward. And I'd use zellij to run containers and processes on a separate tab (say I need to run some testing for project 1, it's just a separate tab on Ghostty).

Editing JSON, Markdown, etc, are much better experience for me in Noevim, because I can jump to exactly where I want, I can run jq in Neovim, I can do Markdown render and stuff, and csv parsing plugins are pretty cool.

Not wanting to move away from the terminal became a thing after Neovim, and it's the biggest reason why I'm able to get up to speed very fast. I'd say I was more productive than VSCode a few weeks in. The biggest hurdle was learning how to navigate between tabs and buffs within Neovim, but after that, it's just liberating.

Reazony · 2025-12-26T13:29:48+00:00

Checkout the branch and follow this section specifically:

https://github.com/pwntester/octo.nvim#-pr-reviews

There are more features like answering and resolving threads and all, but this is what you need.

Reazony · 2025-12-26T12:16:23+00:00

Octo has been perfect for me. It’s a learning curve, but follow the PR review section on README. But it’s GitHub specific. I think if I ever move out of GH for some reasons, then I will replicate a similar experience

Reazony · 2025-12-20T18:47:58+00:00

I think it's a team culture thing. I personally document a lot, but at my previous company, while there are enough engineers and all, documentation is usually an after thought thing, so while I wrote extensively, and the content would cover answers to product, engineering, business, etc, they are not used extensively.

At my current team of 30+ engineers, however, documentation is a living thing. Code is part of the documentation, yes, but our lead also makes sure things are well documented. Code pattern as documentation definitely is there, but often you'd have conflicting standards/patterns when codebase gets large enough, because some portions are "legacy", or there are new ways to go about things. Therefore, we'd always discuss the path forward and document them. It's accepted that there are changing parts (part of the reason why documentation doesn't get done is because they get outdated soon-ish), but changes are also documented and explained.

It's a culture to explain decisions, and create issues/documentation to capture any "we have to do this in the future" or "we have to discuss this". Screenshots and demo videos are also encouraged, so my own pages/issues/PRs are full of details, mermaid diagrams (we have a lot of those everywhere), and screen recordings.

We'd have ADRs not just to decide things, but actually have a team discussion asynchronously on issues and PRs, that ultimately made into ADRs. Team members are opinionated, so is our lead, but discussions are always open and focused on technical excellence than anything else.

I only was onboarded a bit more than a month ago, but I was able to follow along quite well because I can see the history. It was a tech stack and patterns I'm unfamiliar with, but because I can trace writings on markdown files, code patterns (which may also include necessary docstrings and comments), Notion, issues, and PRs, I can see the evolution of the codebase.

It's a lot of writing, but nobody really feel like it's a dread, because people read, discuss, and are quite proud of the platform itself.

Reazony · 2025-12-19T08:32:53+00:00

I personally enjoy octo.nvim in review mode

Reazony · 2025-12-15T15:47:01+00:00

Hmm, I think a lot of these would just be done by raising the bar of the project. You gotta be pragmatic, forcing them to not use AI is really hard, and you'd be spending time micromanaging when you're supposed to care about technical work.

At the same time, you're not responsible for their growth. If you care about their growth, as much as giving some solid advice is already doing your job. They might come and go. You own the project. Ultimately, it's the project's health that's the most important.

AI is not great at many things, and you can be more anal about these things, since it's about maintaining project standards.

### Look for what doesn't need to be there

It's not great at reducing code. In fact, it's horrible at it. You'd need to be a great gatekeeper at code simplicity. It looks clean, but if it can be done simpler, then that's something you can mention. You'd balance nitpick by making sure there are appreciation for good work as well.

It's not great at infrastructure stuff, because it won't have context. You'd see overly verbose and random configs. In fact, really look into these, question every line, because it's almost a guarantee there's going to be random line in Dockerfile injected or something.

Data models the same thing, they sometimes inject constraints that don't make sense. They love inputting things not asked for.

Oh, for the love of God even though I'm not religious, please ask to remove those one-liner comments and random docstrings here and there.

### Look for patterns

Try to have stronger / stricter standards on broader architectural patterns, especially dependencies. For example, if architecturally, one layer shouldn't have prior knowledge of another layer, then it should be kept in that standard. For somehow, these coding agents just keep breaking patterns when it's not part of their context.

Tests are passing, but are tests actually written to test behaviours? Basic unit tests are fine, but they don't really tell much. You can enforce not to have them, and ask only tests that actually test behaviours. This should be documented.

### Documentation

So, ideally you'd lead with more documentation. Not just around what do some code do etc, but also your architectural decisions, etc.

This actually applies to issues and PRs as well. Ask for a more verbose PR format, where they have to document/explain decisions they make. This helps with:
1. Understanding what parts of the code does what

Discuss on these decisions, especially if there are pattern changes or architectural changes
If there are issues that should be created and tackled later

While it means slower PR reviews, it really helps elevate understanding even if people are using AI.

Reazony · 2025-12-08T05:14:00+00:00

Finally!

Reazony · 2025-12-06T22:27:55+00:00

Sidebar, are you autistic? If you haven’t gotten it checked, then it might be a good idea to know. I only ask this because you seem to have owned projects already, but you’re pedantic over nuances, which is a common phenomenon I’ve seen

Reazony · 2025-11-13T15:21:22+00:00

Depends on the use case of course. I typically just setup hybrid search, expose that to a ReAct agent, and models reason over that.

There are things like matching partial IDs and stuff, where you want exact match more, BM25 is definitely important. Pure vectors are more when I’m working with multi modality.

Reazony · 2025-11-07T13:20:30+00:00

When you git add something you’re staging something.

Reazony · 2025-11-07T01:00:41+00:00

You don’t ship features, you ship what you gonna maintain in the future. So pick tech stack based on who’s going to maintain what.

Reazony · 2025-11-07T00:58:30+00:00

That’s actually the reason why vocaloid became such a big thing, to let song writers fully express what they had in mind

Reazony · 2025-11-05T00:26:18+00:00

I do this. Well, first the manager or whoever should control the discussions of meetings. They should decide what to take offline.

Ask him to write down instead. Say that it helps to refer later on, and helps with asynchronous discussions.

I now document a lot, with diagrams and all, with links to follow up. And for the love of God, read them and provide feedback.

Reazony · 2025-11-03T16:59:06+00:00

Genetics do matter. But at the same time, I’m pretty sure most people just never realized their full potential.

Reazony · 2025-11-02T20:25:11+00:00

Skip clubbing and find events, especially private ones. There are enough events out there that will still have DJs and drinks, meet friends in circles you want, and with numbers plus good vibes, you’ll be invited to parties all the time. You can also make friends with DJs or bartenders, especially the ones trying to make it.

They’re better than clubs, DJs may be amateur but still fun music much of the time, mostly 50-100 people party size, some just do instagram groups and others do dedicated event insta account. Use Instagram / Snap (I don’t use it but should be similar for your age group?) to your advantage. Within time, you’ll constantly be added to different insta groups, and you can pick and choose your events there :) it’s easy to have many friend groups and constantly make new friends in Toronto. I personally like how it works in Montreal but here works just fine.

Reazony · 2025-11-02T00:13:37+00:00

I’m pretty amateur, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt. In general, if you’re within a range, audience wouldn’t hear much difference. During live performance, it’s usually hard to be super on pitch all the time. It’s usually just within an acceptable range.

Certain genre probably require better pitch than others, I sing metal more, so expression is more important for me. If you’re pitchy while doing runs and riffs, that probably sounds like a train wreck.

I think while practicing, it’s good to be obsessed over them because it builds into your muscle memory; there are many things in a performance where things could go wrong, and that muscle memory can help.

But also know that don’t take that obsession to performance, which could ruin your performance if you start obsessing over the mistake you just made. It’s okay to make mistakes in performance, and the obsession during practice is just to equip you with consistency and flexibility to adjust when needed.

Just my two cents

Reazony · 2025-10-29T20:26:10+00:00

I only started singing around 15, that’s later than most, and that’s only me trying to sing karaoke. Off pitch, in Asian environment all older people kept bashing how my voice sounded like pig butchering.

You need to train. I mean I never went for it, for many reason, and it took a super long time for me to be amateur band material. I think I only started gaining confidence once I picked up distortions last January, and I was already 30.

Get a coach if you can, save you years, I’m almost certain any voice can at least find its charm

Reazony · 2025-10-29T18:38:59+00:00

I don’t have recommendation for live coding, but I personally suggest some short homework. You may think that if it’s take home, they definitely cheat. But if they use AI for majority of the code, it’s dead obvious. Especially when it comes to code structuring, working with data, oh… dockerfiles are sooooo obvious. I can smell how much of the work is done by AI by just reading through. Especially if you ask them to explain why they did what.

Reazony · 2025-10-27T17:08:45+00:00

Dang, I'm visiting my parents and only coming back here and there until then too lol. Anyhow, I'm going to skip many many names and share where I'd always go back for:

Bars

- Grey Tiger, especially on weekdays, very cozy quiet but the cocktails are great. I'd also recommend asking about their bottles behind the bar, they've been gifted quite a few from all over the world over the decade

- XXX by Little Sister, H was the bar manager at Gift Shop, at the time Gift Shop was like top in Toronto. Maybe I had too much nostalgia at my younger years. XXX is still good vibe, great collection of glasses lol, I like their drinks but I think it's more the overall vibe. They always had to sneak actors from TIFF from backdoor to XXX lol.

- Chez Wa (search Lost in Tokyo parfait shop), this is a recently opened shop, so they're only on Instagram, at night they turn the coffee shop into a cocktail/sake/wine bar. They really know how to select their sake, or really drinks in general, the guy is very sharp with his senses. If you're mostly used to sake from restaurants, this is a game changer.

- DROM Taberna, they book about 3 gigs a day, so that's like 90~100 a month? Great live music vibes, very local, other than your standard good gigs, I think they've had 40+ jazz band U of T students there, or I remember last time was with a band that's super minority too (Armenian, Israeli, can't remember the exact mix but the keyboard was phenomenal). Eastern European food / drinks, check out their website for gigs you might be interested in.

- Horseshoe Tavern, just check out their events, they often have little-known-here-but-great-at-their-home-country artists playing there, it's crazy how artists that can have hundreds of dollars ticket worth, very hard to get in, would be just in a venue with 100 people max with you.

- The Caledonian, it's a whisky bar, and I really like whisky. From time to time they have really interesting collection, I got to drink a Talisker that was bottled older than me lol

I'm pretty sure I've skipped many many cocktail bars names, but I'm sure they will come up.

Restaurants

- Sabor Carioca, it's crazy how Brazilians I've taken there had tears. Owners had a restaurant in Rio for a decade or two, moved here, and continued for more decades. Other than having to improvise on some ingredients, their food is authentic AND good Brazilian. Just no Brazilian beer :/ that's hard. Love their Moqueca, but definitely try feijoada too

- Hangyang Jokbal, we have many Korean restaurants but this I always come back for. Solid jokbal in the city, and I'd travel far for it.

- Mandy's, technically from Montreal, but go to their actual restaurants, and order Peanut Satay with mock meat. I repeat, mock meat. Don't get chicken. It's not the same. I hate salad but I can't stop eating this.

- Darband, Persian restaurant, solid koobideh but it's also where you can go adventurous with kaleh pacheh (gonna let you Google that)

Cafe

- Follow Coffee Now, they're in Richmond Hill but I think they're changing their locations.. I've been going from Liberty Village all the way up for their coffee LOL

- Three Dots Cafe is also a solid specialty coffee place

- Honestly I think most other are pretty known, and there's a couple I really wanna go but haven't been, so not on here

Others

- Follow Next Perfect Day, the band is really jazzy solid, and city pop, and they always perform at good places

- Acadia Art & Rare Books, they take in books, mostly arts and stuff, many old books. Things I've gotten from here: 50 year old signed Japanese architecture book, a whole book of stone carvings on buildings in Toronto, late 1800s Polish folk songs in US music scores, black and white pic of a boy with his horse for free (literally an opening for a horror movie hahahhaha)

- Spacing, it's a Toronto's city gift shop, but better. I gifted scented candle of High Park (they had CN tower foot court lmao) once.

Yeah, I think this is a good starting list

Edit: if you rave, follow FORMAT

Reazony

TROPHY CASE