<story><title>You&apos;re Worthwhile, Even When You Make Mistakes</title><url>https://spin.atomicobject.com/2019/06/30/mentoring-you-are-worthwhile/#.XRkm4GAtLuU.hackernews</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>keyle</author><text>When I started, I was an intern. I was lucky to live in a day where not every metrics were used to rate someone&amp;#x27;s productivity. So employees had time for me. Time to help me learn, and figure out stuff.&lt;p&gt;As I wasn&amp;#x27;t paid, I had low pressure to deliver good things. That said I was trying really hard to bring a net positive.&lt;p&gt;I miss the days where having interns was a common thing. We&amp;#x27;d give them the repetitive boring jobs but they&amp;#x27;d also get real experience and see _how_ things were done. Later they&amp;#x27;d be trusted to do just about anything.&lt;p&gt;Now it&amp;#x27;s all &amp;#x27;senior&amp;#x27;. Every job is looking for a heavy-hitter rockstar superman. Even if it&amp;#x27;s wrapped into this joly &amp;#x27;hey we&amp;#x27;re cool and kinda awesome too, woowee us!&amp;#x27; - they&amp;#x27;re still wanting to find senior mad-scientists.&lt;p&gt;I contract myself out to large&amp;#x2F;small businesses, all sorts of industries, big pay jobs. Number of interns: 0.&lt;p&gt;The net result is I see plenty of &amp;#x27;senior engineers&amp;#x27; hired who I wouldn&amp;#x27;t call senior. They&amp;#x27;ve got 5 years experience, 2 of them were writing tests, and they&amp;#x27;re &amp;#x27;senior&amp;#x27;?&lt;p&gt;Do the future a favour, get a few interns. They&amp;#x27;ll keep you young!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>treerock</author><text>&amp;gt; get a few interns&lt;p&gt;Pretty much agree, but not sure Internships are the best way to do it. Expecting people to work for no pay means you only get those that can afford to work for no pay.&lt;p&gt;I remember an article on HN from few years ago, about the German apprentice system. Paid work, coupled with college education.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;tobi.lutke.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;11280301-the-apprentice-programmer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;tobi.lutke.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;11280301-the-apprentice-pr...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=5314268&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=5314268&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>You&apos;re Worthwhile, Even When You Make Mistakes</title><url>https://spin.atomicobject.com/2019/06/30/mentoring-you-are-worthwhile/#.XRkm4GAtLuU.hackernews</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>keyle</author><text>When I started, I was an intern. I was lucky to live in a day where not every metrics were used to rate someone&amp;#x27;s productivity. So employees had time for me. Time to help me learn, and figure out stuff.&lt;p&gt;As I wasn&amp;#x27;t paid, I had low pressure to deliver good things. That said I was trying really hard to bring a net positive.&lt;p&gt;I miss the days where having interns was a common thing. We&amp;#x27;d give them the repetitive boring jobs but they&amp;#x27;d also get real experience and see _how_ things were done. Later they&amp;#x27;d be trusted to do just about anything.&lt;p&gt;Now it&amp;#x27;s all &amp;#x27;senior&amp;#x27;. Every job is looking for a heavy-hitter rockstar superman. Even if it&amp;#x27;s wrapped into this joly &amp;#x27;hey we&amp;#x27;re cool and kinda awesome too, woowee us!&amp;#x27; - they&amp;#x27;re still wanting to find senior mad-scientists.&lt;p&gt;I contract myself out to large&amp;#x2F;small businesses, all sorts of industries, big pay jobs. Number of interns: 0.&lt;p&gt;The net result is I see plenty of &amp;#x27;senior engineers&amp;#x27; hired who I wouldn&amp;#x27;t call senior. They&amp;#x27;ve got 5 years experience, 2 of them were writing tests, and they&amp;#x27;re &amp;#x27;senior&amp;#x27;?&lt;p&gt;Do the future a favour, get a few interns. They&amp;#x27;ll keep you young!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>adrianN</author><text>Writing good tests is not easy. It&amp;#x27;s an important skill that not everybody has. In some industries, where you write safety critical software, you actually need &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; experience before you are allowed to work unsupervised as a tester. The testers I&amp;#x27;ve worked with also had a say in the design of the software and were allowed to veto architectural decisions for being too hard to test.&lt;p&gt;So please don&amp;#x27;t look down on people writing tests. Quality assurance is what makes software suck less.</text></comment>