HN Explorer

Ask HN: As a freelancer, how can I help a junior team?

2 points by kugelblitz ↗ HN
As a freelancer, what can I actively do that doesn't incur too much overhead on the junior developers, but can still support them in their work and career?

Background: I'm a self-taught web developer, doing freelance for about 8 years now, I've worked with about 10 companies (anything from 1 month to 12 months at a time) and have also created a mostly-automated revenue-generating side-business.

In my current project I'm placed in a very junior team. They're all good coders, but for many of them, it's their first job after university.

I'm trying to figure out, how I can best help the team. I do pair programming with several of them. I try to crank out some features, but their domain knowledge is higher and the codebase is very large, so my efficiency is limited. I've done a workshop to get more out of their IDE (JetBrains tools in this case) and they liked it.

ADDED: Am not in a managerial position. I was asked to help develop features as freelance developer, but after a month, the project manager had asked me if I can also help the team in a more mentoring / coaching role.

2 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 13.1 ms ] thread
tboyd47
The way to grow juniors is to feed them very narrowly defined programming tasks across a range of difficulty, give them ample time to complete them, and provide measured feedback along the way.

If you're not in a managerial position over them (it's not really clear from your post - are you?) then you can probably only do the 3rd one, and even then, only if they want you to.

tboyd47
Update after added info above.

Without knowing much about your team, my advice is this. The request from your manager should be taken as optional. Unless it's part of your contract explicitly, it's really the manager's job to oversee and coach the juniors on the team. Don't accept it as part of your job because it will slow you down. You already mentioned you are having difficulty with efficiency.

Instead, create a better learning environment within the team. If there's not already a code review process on your team, start one. Encourage them to pair with each other more than with you.

If you like teaching and giving workshops, keep doing that, but go public with it and do it outside work hours. For example, start a meet-up in your area and host it at your company.