Because I expect people to have basic reading and Internet searching skills.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I don't have a problem mentoring them on what skills they should learn. I also don't have a problem directing them to resources where they can learn - even telling them what to focus on and what not to focus on. But I expect that once I point them to a resource, they'll go and read it. For things that don't have good resources, or if it's just a small tool/library that's not essential for their job, I'm happy to walk them through it.
Put another way: If you were my boss, would you want me to spend my time teaching the same basic Git usage to every junior hire? Teaching the same stuff over and over again? Wouldn't you rather I either write docs or make a video once and just have them watch it? Or even better, just point them to the many existing docs/resources out there?
> Put another way: If you were my boss, would you want me to spend my time teaching the same basic Git usage to every junior hire?
I guess I think it depends. I think some companies absolutely do need to take this on, hiring very green brand new hires and investing a large chunk of their more senior engineers' time into showing them the ropes. How else would it get done? I don't mean only for this specific example of git usage, but every entry level employee - whether from a college program or a bootcamp or self taught or whatever else - is gonna have a lot of gaps, and the company, and thus its more senior employees, should recognize that it's their job to mentor them through those gaps. Personally, I think companies are too hesitant to hire truly entry level employees and invest in training them.
> I don't mean only for this specific example of git usage, but every entry level employee - whether from a college program or a bootcamp or self taught or whatever else - is gonna have a lot of gaps,
That's understandable - the issue under contention is how to address the gap. I absolutely do not expect people to know Git when they start. If you look at my comment history, including in the last few days, you'll see that I dislike Git and think there are better alternatives.
The issue is: Once a gap has been identified, and there is plenty of documentation/resources out there, why is it not enough to point them to it? Why is it not enough to have a Wiki page listing all the tools they're expected to know/learn, with guides to resources to learn from? If there's a specific, obscure or internal tool with poor docs, I can understand spending time with each hire. But should a developer always teach:
- How to use Git
- How to write makefiles[1]
- How to do regular expressions (including teaching the syntax, etc).
- How to use a standard shell (bash/zsh/csh/tcsh)
Larger companies often have senior folks teaching courses on these, which I like. My complaint isn't that these courses shouldn't exist. It's that with some employees, directing them to the course simply doesn't seem to suffice.
I think the role of mentorship by senior folks is more for :
- Teaching them certain design principles/patterns
- Pointing things out during code reviews
- Teaching how to test things well (I still haven't found a single good resource for this).
- Teaching when to shun/embrace complexity
- What they should learn/focus on (e.g. identify strengths and weaknesses, and how to overcome weaknesses).
And so on: Basically things that are mostly gained out of hard experience or that are undecided (i.e. differing opinions in industry - senior giving his/her take).
But certainly, if there were books/resources that unambiguously teach items from the above, I think a junior employee should be given that resource and they should learn.
(And by learn, I mean on the job, on company time).
[1] Although I'd used makefiles to compile tools for over a decade, I never learned the syntax. Then for one job I needed it. No one would teach me it. It's a heavily used tool and it was understood that I should just read the Make docs. I didn't think it unreasonable.
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If you have a good relationship with your boss, talk to them. Don't whine. Have a solution or a fact finding plan.
Why are they coming to you? How is that expectation being set and reinforced? I don't know how many people this is, or how big the entire org is, maybe you need an org-wide bootcamp. If they don't have basic reading and internet searching skills, how did they get the job? I smell something for management to handle here.
Because I expect people to have basic reading and Internet searching skills.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I don't have a problem mentoring them on what skills they should learn. I also don't have a problem directing them to resources where they can learn - even telling them what to focus on and what not to focus on. But I expect that once I point them to a resource, they'll go and read it. For things that don't have good resources, or if it's just a small tool/library that's not essential for their job, I'm happy to walk them through it.
Put another way: If you were my boss, would you want me to spend my time teaching the same basic Git usage to every junior hire? Teaching the same stuff over and over again? Wouldn't you rather I either write docs or make a video once and just have them watch it? Or even better, just point them to the many existing docs/resources out there?