I know it’s a joke, but I do not enjoy being in the position with the stick.
Like, man, they’ll sometimes check in some stupid stuff. Yesterday, I told two juniors to implement a unit test and they could use annotations like on another unit test, which I also explained.
Problem is, I had introduced that unit test a week ago and had given it an ignored-annotation, to document that that’s currently broken.
And you guessed it, they copied that ignored-annotation, too, complete with the comment “//TODO currently broken”. The test they implemented was not run, not even once.And like, what the fuck do I do with that? Sure enough, it was a miscommunication, I’ll try to be clearer next time.
But I’d also really like to explain to them whatever information they were missing, if they were missing any. Like, did they not know what the ignored-annotation does? Did they not think at all and just verbatim copied everything?And then the problem is, this is kind of so dumb, that even just bringing it up is going to be embarassing for them. It’s already me beating them with a stick.
I’d much rather praise them when they do something well, but this is so hard to spot when just reading over committed code. All the obstacles they cleared are not visible in there.Sometimes it takes a little unintentional embarrassment to drive a point home. It’ll make them think twice next time.
What I mean by that is that as long as you’re not intentionally or maliciously trying to embarrass them, then you shouldn’t feel bad. You cannot always control how somebody receives information; nor should you. The best you can do is to be clear and polite in your communication. If someone’s feelings get hurt, that’s on them to reconcile, not you.
This is genuinely like parenting a child: they need to develop their critical thinking skills, and to gain their own confidence. So they must be left to make their own mistakes to learn from. Your job is to give show them the tools to use, give advice when necessary, and be there to catch them when they fall; because they will fall.
Doing this will help bolster their self-confidence and make them better mid-/senior-developers later in their career. Coddling them and constantly holding their hand will make them reliant on other people and prevent them from learning anything.
Edit: also remember KISS. 😊
