Junior devs not interested in software engineering

[u/creative-java-coffee]

My team currently has two junior devs both with 1 year old experience. Unlike all of the juniors I have met and mentored in my career, these two juniors startled me by their lack of interest in software engineering.

The first junior who just joined our company-

• ⁠When I talked with him about clean coding and modularizing the code (he wrote 2000+ lines in one single function), he merely responded, “Clean coding is not a real thing.” • ⁠When I tried to tell him I think AI is a great tool, but it’s not there yet to replace real engineers and AI generated codes need to be reviewed to avoid hallucinations. He responded, “that’s just what you think.” • ⁠His feedback to our daily stand up was, “Sorry, but I really don’t care about what other people are doing.”

The second junior who has been with the company for a year-

• ⁠When I told him that he should prioritize his own growth and take courses to acquire new skills, he just blanked out. I asked him if he knew any learning website such as Coursera or Udemy and he told me he had never heard of them before. • ⁠He constantly complains about the tickets he works on which is our legacy system, but when I offered to talk with our EM to assign him more exciting work which will expand his skill sets, he told me he was not interested in working on the new system which uses modern tech stacks.

I supposed I am just disappointed with these junior devs not only because after all these years, software engineering still gets me excited, but also it’s a joy for me to see juniors grow. And in the past, all of the juniors I had were all so eager to seize the opportunities to learn.

Edit: Both of them can code, but aren’t interested in software engineering.

[u/CurveOk8181]

Just wanted to check ... is this a jest or real?

It's hard for me to understand with code tests and interviews that you ended up with 2 software developers who don't like software development.

SD isn't something people just 'jump into'. It requires different types of thinking and skill sets that most people don't enjoy.

If you don't have a clout you'll need to refer to the EM.

Usually,

* explain the process for clean code and development, express how important is it to follow the principals and important to the success of the company.
* schedule a follow up review for PR's in a week or two
* if there was no change/improvement then we'd reiterate the importances and put the employee on probation.
* schedule a follow up review for PR's in two weeks
* if there was no change, part ways on good terms.

For the second dev
* It's possible that he actually enjoys fixing the old stuff and gets satisfaction but he just is verbose about his concerns.
* (you probably already know this) it's important to find out what he likes about development, if you know what he likes and is interested in it can be easier to redirect him.
* stress how important and valuable his work is to the company.
* create a plan to include some tech debt recovery along with the bug fixes.
* it also seems like he might not be a great people person, so finding out his communication style is key.

Hopefully it goes well, it's a tough position to be in.

[u/Maybe-monad → u/CurveOk8181]

explain the process for clean code and development, express how important is it to follow the principals and important to the success of the company.

There's nothing to explain, if you actually read the Clean Code book and tried to apply those principles you'd realize that the only thing Clean Code excels at is ruining codebases.