dr 🛠️🛰️📡🎧Sep 24

Meta #mentor question

I've got a 9 month new grad/hire. They are very smart and detailed but terrified of making a single move without 3x confirmation.

I mean like asking multiple times about the E X A C T code changes needed before editing a single line. Then asking again in the same conversation.

I have to spend long periods walking them through existing code and data structures that they could also just discover by looking at the files I originally mentioned.

How do you break this person out of this habit? My current idea is to tell them what I think is plenty, then when I get more questions ask what they've tried so far....?

#software #engineering #developer #management

Show thread Mike Amundsen

@davidr

sound like they are worred about making a fatal mistake (commiting bad code into production).

1) do you have test sets to run before commiting code?
2) do you have production rollback in place?

if yes to these things, i would sit down with my colleague and help them "break" production.

show them what it takes to get past the test suite and to commit the bug to production, experience the error, and rollback the changes to stable state.

Sep 24 at 3:10pmWeb
Show threaddr 🛠️🛰️📡🎧Sep 24

@mamund They don't even have access to production directly

I've pointed out more than once that they are

1. editing and running code locally in local branches
2. on a *different network* than the operational system

There isn't even a way to write to *test databases* from this component.

It's completely harmless.

Show thread Mike AmundsenSep 24

@davidr

Huh.

What do you think is behind this?

Is this just with code? Other decisions, responsibilities?

What happens if you just stop repeating yourself?

Show threaddr 🛠️🛰️📡🎧Sep 24

@mamund Mmmmm....yes, it seems to be with other decisions as well. In fact, those have dropped off but I think it's bc my advice didn't pan out. ("I never fill those out and they haven't fired me yet...")

I think it's anxiety/self-doubt, really. I'm trying a "don't worry, you can do this" coupled with laggy answers to try to encourage them to just. try. something.

But it isn't reducing the amount of questions that could be answered by the most superficial glance at the code or running a single test case.