> “Generate a react app without scaffolding” instructed the Master.
> The student could not.
He could, how ever, BCC his team lead's boss that he's being put on useless tasks that only serve to give the team lead a sense of superiority.
> The student could not.
He could, how ever, BCC his team lead's boss that he's being put on useless tasks that only serve to give the team lead a sense of superiority.
As both lead and mentor simultaneously to a junior developer, the suggestions I give him are very _very_ different depending on which role I'm playing at the time, and I make it abundantly clear which role is speaking at any given point in time.
This is precisely the sort of suggestion many juniors need to hear from their mentors (because there is real value in understanding the difference between deep and shallow knowledge, and the role of tooling), but is of course a terrible task for a lead to give a junior (because it's a pointless waste of time as part of a production project)
I don't know what OP meant, but I assume that's what he was driving at.
The mentor/mentee relationship isn't usually a formal one enforced by your workplace — it's one built over time, when a less experience member of the team trusts somebody more knowledgeable, and seeks them out for advice. Any such suggestions are usually meant to be taken as as side projects, not as work tasks.
A lead giving you a task like that is probably inappropriate, because they should be focused on producing results. They should, instead, try to find low-hanging fruit that's within your reach. For a mentor, however, it's entirely appropriate to tell you to do something "useless" because the real goal isn't the end product, but the learning experience.
Frankly I welcome someone who wants to teach me something I don’t know. As long as they’re not obnoxious (which is, thankfully, rare)
It must, however, come from the side of the mentee, not the mentor. If you _want_ to teach someone something, that will always come off bad, from my experience. As a junior dev, I used to hate this slightly senior dev (same position, but has been with the company a year longer) trying to teach me stuff, and saying things like "yea, do this, at least you'll learn how to do it", assigning me useless little things that I did not need in my daily work. In the end, I had to tell him that he's in no position to assign me anything, and I had to talk to my manager about this colleague thinking he can assign me things (practically, I said 'this has to end or I'm out). Things got significantly better after that.
"I used to hate this slightly senior dev [for] trying to teach me stuff"
Why do _you_ think you're being downvoted?
Fuck... This has angered me much more than I thought it would have. But ok, rather than thinking "huh, I wonder whether I came off as condescending to my less experienced colleagues", let's enjoy the mindless downvote and feeling of justification in one's old ways. In the end, that's what matters; no introspection, just confirmation.