Ask HN: Teach/Coach That Which You Do Not Know (Well)

Looking for tips/experiences/suggestions with regards to teaching/coaching another when you wouldn't necessarily be able to do the things you're teaching yourself.

A lab unit I'm affiliated with has hired a very junior person (their first job) who lacks substantial technical abilities that offset their lack of experience. The intent is for this person to work with UI/UX-concerns, with an emphasis towards dataviz.

The others in the organisation have some fleeting familiarity with dataviz, as they've had to do that work in the past, but it'd be fair to argue that they wouldn't know what's idiomatic or be able to identify anti-patterns etc.

They'd can provide some general guidance, distinguish between maintainability nightmares and maintainable code, and ask inquisitive enough questions to ensure that the new hire knows what they've written out rather than having just copy-pasted code that they do not understand. Seemingly, they'd consider that a long-term investment; in effect, making the trade-off between "getting it done quickly, now" and setting good precedents for later.

I can think only advise that they try and find what tasks this person would be comfortable undertaking now, and gently nudge them outside of their comfort zone and continue to do so repeatedly while instilling in their now colleague an expectation that the onus is on them to know and explain why they choose to do things in a certain way.

The reason I can't think of anything more meaningful is my view of how learning happens: I don't believe in spending too much time taking online courses, or "training", as I believe the best way to perform within a job is to do the actual work.

Initially, the assigned work might have to be carefully curated much like during an onboarding process, but ultimately I believe that to be comfortable in a performance-situation such as performing one's job one has to spend time doing that job and meeting reasonable expectations.

Am I wrong?