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Comment by ohthatsnotright | Hacker News Reader

If your team is waiting a full day to "surface issues" you've got some deep and troubling communication problems that a daily meeting isn't going to solve.

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Depends on the team. I almost prefer juniors to make some mistakes and spend some time trying to figure it out on their own. There's a good chance they won't figure it out, but the journey they go on is a lot of time worth it.

    There's a good chance they won't figure it out, but the journey they go on is a lot of time worth it.

That's true of the good guys. Just make sure that you don't let the not so good guys spin their wheels in perpetuity, day after day on yet another problem. Or sometimes the same in different clothes. The good guy also probably told you earlier by pinging you for a quick 5 minute chat / call and was then back on his way.

but i thought leetcode made sure you hire competent engineers?

I think it’s hard to draw a broad stroke. Good team members unblock themselves. Sometimes that means dealing an answer right now. Sometimes that means shifting to something else.

My personal experience is team velocity is higher when you avoid team member immediately jumping for help when they face a problem. Loosing 1 day on 1x person is no worse than having 2x people loose 1/2 day.

Also, sometime problems just take time to solve. I’ve often come up with solutions after letting a problem sit for a day.

Having it last a maximum of a day is pretty convenient though. Of course it’d be better if people tell you after being stuck for a few hours, but not all people (especially junior) have learned/internalized that yet.

I think this depends on the dev - some devs will contact immediately when there are issues, and others suffer in silence.

It comes down to devs who are good at communicating, and those who arent, and shows the importance of communication as a skill. I'd take a weaker dev who is good at communicating over one who suffers in silence everytime

Well, the question was about junior engineers. In my experience, they will occasionally burn a whole day without making real progress. Communication is one of the many skills that differentiate juniors from more senior resources.

Many people prefer to focus on their work instead of constantly keeping an eye on Slack.

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