The communication ends up being such a bottleneck that your senior devs might as well do the 10% writing. Incidentally also the reason why outsourcing software doesn't work if you're trying to do anything innovative.
Re:Who Killed the Junior Developer?
by mywittyname on Wednesday February 14, 2018 @05:44PM
(#16380233)
Hiring devs to just think is part of what creates these convoluted mess of systems. It's impossible to convey and idea well enough that another person could implement it in the same fashion. Look at language specifications: they are written by top-tier developers, but when implemented by other equally top-tier developers, there is an inevitable difference of opinion.
Senior developers should be writing code for important systems, and juniors should be writing the less important bits. That way, they get the opportunity to experiment without the company being stuck with a critical system written by a person who reinvented Yet Another Elliptical Wheel.
Mentoring is important and all, but at some point, you just have to start working.
I've heard that being a dev is 90% thinking about code and 10% writing it.
In my experience you hire senior devs to do the thinking part and junior devs to do the writing part while learning how to do the thinking part.