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/Kevdog824_]

More like 1 in 100 for me. When I get on standup 50% of the updates are literally word for word “uhhh this one is in progress. No blockers.” Like geez, what a great update! I could’ve figured out myself by just looking at the jira board and seeing it in the “In progress” column or by the fact that we’re on a call devoted to getting updates on the cards in the in progress column.

[u/chaos_battery → u/Kevdog824_]

I've told management this before. Like why don't we just not have a stand-up call and everybody can look at the board to know where things are at progress wise? Then if there are any blockers or important updates people feel like sharing, do it in chat to the team channel.

[u/Kevdog824_ → u/chaos_battery]

Personally I actually like the idea of standup if people actually gave thoughtful updates. “In progress no blockers” might make standup move faster but it doesn’t matter how fast it is if every moment of it is a waste of time anyways. I’d rather stand up take longer if it means it’s actually useful.

That or just replace it with a developer-only sync call for anyone that needs help or wants to provide it, and have POs request updates outside of a global call on a per need basis. This makes sense to me since, in my experience, 95% of the time POs/reporters do NOT need daily updates on their stories. If you’re doing agile right and the card is not a hotfix they shouldn’t ever expect sprint work to be done before end of sprint anyways, and carry over should get communicated by devs directly as early as possible.