The last months I had to do a lot of coaching. It made me realize that it’s really hard to teach someone something you have done for years. You sometimes forget what it' is like to be a junior, you just can not understand why, what for you seems like “the simplest fundamentals”, is hard to grasp for someone else.
Some rules that I try to apply:
- Do not take over - It can be really hard sometimes to not take control of the mouse and keyboard and show them what to do. But we all learn the most from our mistakes, so let them try some stuff, if it fails you can fix it together and they will understand why it didn’t work.
- Show the path– Try to direct them to the path of the solution without revealing it. Draw things and have conversations, ask questions such as “what do we want to do now?” or “what do we want to accomplish?” or “What is the error we are getting? and what should we do to fix it?”
- Be ready to learn – I learned something from every person I worked with. Don’t judge too fast just because the idea comes from a junior developer.