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Ask HN: How do I inspire other developers

4 points by karmicthreat ↗ HN
So typically I am a solo developer. At my current employer I need additional help to keep things running smoothly since we have grown so much. So we've hired an additional IT/Developer to support some of our work. This doesn't seem to be working out and this person seems to try to avoid anything difficult out of fear. I think they are capable, just completely lack confidence in tackling new things. I've never really been in this sort of position before, but how do I give them some confidence and inspire them to tackle new things?

2 comments

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candiodari
Most developers will refuse, mostly out of fear, to read existing code, never mind modifying it. It is the hardest thing we do, and yet it's the skill that is most needed in bigger projects.

Give them small, extremely well defined tasks in pieces of the codebase they're probably not familiar with and gradually lower the exactness and well definedness of the tasks, increasing the scope. Use code review to help them BUT make sure they submit things. Do not raise their level of frustration to the point they give up. Worst thing to do is to do it for them. It is important for it to be understood that they will not be blamed, no matter what happens. That means you may need to stand between them and the boss and take flak. And frankly it's a great general idea to never blame anyone for anything short of willful sabotage.

This will mean, for you, to not fix obvious bugs and instead getting this person to do it for you. The first time be ready for something to take a week that you could do in 30 minutes.

karmicthreat
I am currently at this stage. I needed him to fix an old issue in a tool code base that I could fix in an hour. It probably doesn't help that its a rails app and they had no exposure to the ecosystem previously. I did show them how to setup the environment and what I suspected the issue was.