On bothering seniors

I read a suggestion online that “junior software developers” could talk to a large language model (LLM) instead of bothering senior developers with their “easy” questions. Apparently, the juniors are “distracting” the seniors from their important work.

Instead, the suggestion was that juniors could just use the LLM to “level up” until they are “advanced enough” to talk to the seniors.

There are so many things wrong here I wanted to write some thoughts on this.

If you are bothered by questions (no matter how “easy”) from your colleagues, then I’m sorry but you’re not a senior developer. Answering such questions is not distracting from your work - it is your work. One of the most important roles of seniors is to mentor.

The belief that “juniors” are somehow less advanced than “seniors” could also benefit from some critical thought. I see lots of great ideas and thinking outside the box from newcomers. Sometimes having a fresh perspective to your own old ways is enough to make a difference. We need diversity in thinking.

Implicit in the original suggestion was the assumption that the work is divided in such a way that people work individually on separate tasks. In this model, the “senior” is effectively a solo developer working on their own “important” tasks that the unimportant juniors shouldn’t distract from.

This is not teamwork and never has been. I don’t know when things took a wrong turn and this operating model became the standard in our industry, but it’s so sad.

I would encourage experimenting with social programming practices (pairing or mobbing). It’s infinitely better to “level up” with a real, thinking person than with a text generator.

The best thing is you’re not leveling up only one of the persons.