Whether you have been selected to be in charge of managing new junior devs, working with some colleagues that lack organization, do not complete their tasks, write poor code, or have a manager yourself that does not have a clue about the tech stack and the implementation of the project, you might end up doing some extra work, you would not otherwise have to.
Has this ever happened to you? If so, how often do you find yourself in situations like these and how do you manage them?
Top comments (7)
It might not necessarily be everyone's cup of tea, but I wouldn't quite say that managing junior devs is an "extra job" or something that should be seen as a burden. Junior developers are openminded and extremely eager to learn. I believe that working with juniors can help improve communication skills and enforce the understanding you have of programming concepts by teaching — not to mention you'd be directly contributing to the growth of your peers.
Like someone else here mentioned, I have definitely had experiences where others were slacking at university when working on group projects, but I'm fortunate enough to have never experienced this in a work setting. 😅
If this happened to me in a professional environment, though, I'd share constructive feedback with the colleague who is not meeting certain expectations. Maybe you could even work on the task together if he or she struggles performing the task at hand individually, and provide help and guidance. Depending on whether the work needs to be completed urgently, I'd take on the work if needed because ultimately, the entire team is responsible for something to get done (rather than me saying "well, this is not something I am supposed to be doing").
How do you typically manage situations like these?
The lesson I've learned from my personal experience is if you do this often people will start to take advantage of it sooner or later. Do not make this a habit, instead, be open to them about why this is not your task and explain the consequences if they would not do a particular task.
This reminded me of group projects at University 😂 A few of us will always do all the work while others did the bare minimum or nothing at all. I don't think it was because they were incompetent though. I believe some people are just not interested or motivated enough.
I also found that I could get more people to contribute to the team by taking the "manager" role.. assigning responsibilities and tracking everyone's tasks. But it was exhausting for me doing that during the day at work and later at night for university projects. I was so glad when someone else took that role 😅
Never felt that way at work though. I'm lucky to work with people who love what they do and always put their best effort.
This isn't really my story, but @bytebodger created a two part story about someone who was on his team who thought that if something didn't appear in the suggestions of an IDE it does not exist.
Some comments may only be visible to logged-in visitors. Sign in to view all comments.