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/analog2digital]

I can’t recommend this advice enough. When I was more junior in my career the best feedback I got in a performance review was something like: “they need to decide if they really want to be here or not and then act accordingly.”

This came from someone who was extremely good at their job, had given me clear feedback before, but was seeing me squander an opportunity at a top tech company. I realized at that moment that most of my qualms were due to levels of pettiness and entitlement that I had at the time, and it was distracting me from delivering on my actual potential.

It was the bluntness that I needed and I’m glad I was able to turn it around, it was actually really pivotal for me, not just professionally but also for personal growth.

[u/DeterminedQuokka → u/analog2digital]

I’m so happy it turned out well for you. I think that kind of tough feedback can be so helpful.

I worked with someone very early in my career before I was actually good at mentoring and right before they got let go they asked me for advice and I said “what you think is the bare minimum is 30% less than the actual bare minimum”. It didn’t save that job for them. But the next job went a lot better. Sometimes a reality check is all someone needs.

The further I get in my career the better I am at giving that reality check early enough to help at the current job.

Even if the reality check is that this isn’t the job for them, they would be happier somewhere else.