Okay, let me tell you about this situation we had, maybe last year. We got this new guy on the team, let’s call him Dave. Super green, fresh out of wherever, you know? And honestly, the first few weeks were rough. Really rough.
He was trying, you could see that, but things just weren’t clicking. Simple tasks took forever. Code he pushed often broke something else. Lots of little mistakes that added up. Confidence? Zero. He’d ask questions, but then apologize for asking. You could just feel the anxiety coming off him. Some folks on the team were getting a bit impatient, whispering about whether he was cut out for it.
Stepping In
Thing is, I saw something there. Underneath the fumbles, he had a good way of thinking about problems, just no practical application yet. And he listened. When you told him something, he really absorbed it. So, I figured, what the heck, let’s give this a real shot before we write him off. Couldn’t hurt, right?
So, I started spending extra time with him. Nothing official, just grabbing him for 15 minutes here and there.
- We’d look at his code together before he submitted it. Not just pointing out errors, but asking why he did it a certain way.
- I started breaking down his tasks into super small pieces. Like, ridiculously small. Build momentum, you know? Get some quick wins under his belt.
- Made it clear: asking questions is good. Asking the same question repeatedly without trying first is less good, but the first ask? Always welcome.
- Gave him slightly harder stuff, bit by bit. Stuff I knew he could do, even if he didn’t think so.
The Change
It wasn’t overnight. Took a couple of months, easy. There were still screw-ups. But then, you started seeing sparks. He’d catch an error himself before pushing. He’d come with a question, but also with, “I tried this and this, didn’t work, what next?”. That was huge.
Then one day, there was this tricky bug that had a few of the seniors scratching their heads. We were all tied up. And Dave, quiet Dave, just digs into it on his own. Spends half a day tracing things. And damned if he didn’t find the root cause. It wasn’t even in his area of responsibility.
That was the turning point. You could see his shoulders relax a bit after that. He started speaking up more in meetings, offering suggestions. Not always right, but thinking, contributing.
Where He’s At Now
Fast forward to today? He’s solid. Really solid. Handles his own projects, helps onboard the new hires now. People trust his work. He’s still learning, we all are, but the difference is night and day. Went from being the guy everyone was worried about to a reliable part of the engine room.
It took effort, yeah. Patience, too. From him, from me, from the team letting him find his feet. But seeing that kind of turnaround? Totally worth it. Makes the grind feel a bit less like a grind, you know?
