Advice for junior developers

These are pieces of advice that anyone could benefit from regardless of their level of experience. This is not to bash junior developers, but rather sharing mistakes more common among juniors. The intention of this article is to give some perspective to developers so they may better collaborate with their teams. Hope they’re helpful.

Know what to ask

Don’t ask questions with obvious answers. You should definitely ask as many questions as possible to learn from others but certain things are obvious and it could impact people’s perception of your competence. What is considered as obvious is subjective but if you were given requirement to create an API endpoint that accepts a JSON object with {name: “John Doe”, age: 63} it should not be expected that you’re unsure if name should be string or not.

Be patient

Everyone is busy and they have a list of tasks to get through. If you send a message to someone, don’t expect an instant response. The same person you’re asking a question could be getting juggling 10 other things at the same time. You don’t need to spam them with more messages.

Respect people’s time

Have courtesy and respect other people’s time. The more experienced team members are there to help you but you can’t just call them any time of the day just because you are stuck on something or you want to clarify a few things with them. If something can be answered in text, pop a message in. If it’s…