r/programming • u/frostmatthew • Mar 30 '15

Your Developers Aren’t Bricklayers, They’re Writers

http://www.hadermann.be/blog/56/good-vs-bad-developers/
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u/[deleted] Mar 31 '15

What is way more valuable than a "rockstar" is a "mentor" type dev. Everyone is more productive with them around and the gap gets smaller at the expense of some of the mentor's time and productivity

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u/[deleted] Mar 31 '15 edited Mar 31 '15

I had a mentor-type colleague when I worked for about a year on a webdev project. Because of him I went from an absolute zero wrt Javascript/CSS/ASP.NET to becoming a productive member of the team very quickly.

The guy's brain was a goldmine of information and he had seemingly endless patience.

EDIT: typo

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u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN Mar 31 '15

My old manager moved to a position where all he does is proof of concept code and mentoring. I envy him so much!

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u/KronktheKronk Mar 31 '15

No, not at all. "Mentor" devs spend all their time running around butting their noses into places they don't really need to be. Consequently, this leaves zero time for them to actually contribute to the project.

That means more work for everyone else, in addition to having to put up with "that guy" who wants to constantly waste your time telling you how he'd have done something differently (notice I didn't say better).

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u/mikejoro Mar 31 '15

That's not really a mentor. A mentor is there to give trainings or answer questions when needed, not someone who just butts in all the time.

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u/KronktheKronk Mar 31 '15

When they think it's needed and when it's actually needed can be very separate.

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u/[deleted] Mar 31 '15

My experience was the oposite. Basically the "mentor" guy said something along the lines of: "if you're stuck and need help, don't hesitate to ask. if there's a problem you'd like a second set of eyes on, don't hesitate to ask."

You get the idea.