When I was a jr engineer I was paired with some senior people who showed me the ropes. They expected it would take some time to come up to speed and intentionally worked to help me get there. They took my college degree as "proof I could learn" and then taught me what I needed to know.

Over the last decade, I've seen less and less mentoring. Even before COVID and in office environments. The productivity expectations are just so high so often. It's hard to succeed in that environment.

I don't like training and mentoring people. I'm pretty good at it, but I try my damnest to avoid it now.

In software I've seen this to be a huge problem. In other disciplines my observations are that it's not as bad.

The turnover issues is something that could use a lot more exploration. Nothing is going to change until it impacts those who are distant from the front line engineers. The managers of the engineers know about the problems. The executives over them are distant from the problem.

What do you mean? Because companies are leaving a lot of money on the table, unable to complete software projects, and unable to solve the problems they care about just because of it.

You mean it in some way other than monetary impact?

It is about pay. If you switched jobs in the past year, you got a massive raise. If you stuck around, you got peanuts, if anything.

I am sure there is some sort of game psychology explanation on HR's behaviour and equally, from an employee perspective, the cost/inertia of following through with a job change will probably weight in HR's favor.

Money is why a lot of young devs quit, but it’s not the only reason.

I've seen junior devs getting promotions in several cases because they were that good. On the other hand, I've seen several less performant junior devs that are treated as completely replaceable. This was in companies where mentoring actually happened.

I agree, and for this reason, I don't like the framing of the editorialized headline, which lays blame only the Junior employee. We also have to consider this a failing among management, whether that be a direct supervisor who isn't taking an active enough role in the junior's development, or a higher manager who is giving out too much work so as to leave no one time for development.

ETA: the submitted headline has since changed.

I've seen a lack of willingness be mentored / coached. Not directly of folks I have worked with but as a bystander. There's not one clear reason but there is an overtone of entitlement.

What do you mean by this? They were arrogant?

Most questions I could only get an answer from was about business requirements because they were either too busy or didn't knew much more about the part I was working on.

Not sure if my situation is usual though, even for interns after COVID started.

In other industries you need immense capital investment in equipment for workers to be productive; no serious software company should care about the comparative pittance that office hardware costs.

I'm typing on a 300 euro keyboard right now but I would consider it a gross waste of money if a company decided to give them to every single employee regardless of need or preference. For instance for most people better chairs and desks would be a vastly better investment, ergonomy-wise.

I can't type on these things to save my life. I need full keys with at least some click in order to type well. When I'm forced to use the keyboard and trackpad on my mac, I am an order of magnitude slower than I am on a cheap external keyboard and mouse.

In both cases the stuff people are fussing over is basically a rounding error compared to the big factors.

Beyond some basic utility, e.g. being able to compile the code in under 5min, the hardware one uses is of negligible impact to their success. A developer will succeed or fail based on their training, mentorship, the nature of the tasks they are given, and all the other more social and interpersonal facets of the business they fine themselves in. A glitchy mouse won't make them or break them.

If they are making this easily fixable mistake, imagine what else they're doing poorly.

[1]: https://jnd.org/emotion_design_attractive_things_work_better...

Low morale = lower quality of work.

It can break my god damn wrist joints if I have to use it all day. Speaking from experience.

Engineers are expensive, and every minute they spend fighting with equipment rather than being productive is costly.

I wouldn't make a strong statement like that. As a junior, you're just excited to be there, and gain experience. If the company policy is that you don't get the top-of-the-line hardware until you reach a certain professional milestone and this policy is applied equally then it's not the end of the world.

For the first few months perhaps. Then a friend sends a pic of his setup and tells you that he will split a referral bonus with you if you apply. It took me 4 months to find my first dev job, once I hit the 6 month mark, jobs came to me in abundance.

This is not the star-studded retention policy you think it is.

" Everything is “reservable equipment” of garbage monitors, windows keyboards, and 400 dpi mice."

Given I can only reasonably have a single application open (which is an IDE with full documentation/intellisense inside) it means I'm forced to focus, apart from right now obviously.

To add, while this study isn't measuring actual productivity, people say they expect/feel like their productivity increased 40% with a second monitor:

https://www.jonpeddie.com/press-releases/jon-peddie-research...

This is true, but the learning process is much more enjoyable when you are correctly equipped.

A related note is that I loathe garbage keyboards. If you make me type on some garbage rubber-dome with unbalanced and scratchy keys, I will not be happy.

I've never understood why people are willing to put up with garbage gear either. I'm not talking about the computer itself, but the things you touch.

You sit at this machine and use it for 8h+ a day. Why shouldn't you be in contact with things that feel good to you?

Nice screen (or two if that is your preference), decent keyboard, mouse that feels good. I think it is important.

Mechanics don't use dollar store ratchets, do they?

Give me a break. Software development has been going on for decades now on all kinds of hardware (how did all those Software developers survive all these years??).

You can be productive and get your work done on a single monitor, you just prefer dual monitors.

If my company only gave me dirty river water, sure water is good and technically I'll probably survive if it's free of parasites, but once you have high quality filtered water you don't want to go back to drinking from streams.

A single monitor is not a health hazard.

For some reason people here are purposely confusing "I can't" with "I prefer not to"

Even I use a tiling terminal application, but that still leaves me needing another display for the web browser and work chat, for instance.

Then those are preferences, not need. I agree a second monitor should be provided if asked, but in no way is it a requirement. I'm not alone in my preferences either. I learned to code in Turbo C where the line length was _puny_ compared to even this comment box here. I was probably more productive back then.

With great difficulty, and/or by having printed reference material in a readily reachable position - think program listings, magazines, reference books, paper notes.

On a related note, if you have never had a mouse with buttons on the side, I can greatly recommend trying it. Especially if you navigate through IDEs with your mouse and not the keyboard, i.e. you have one hand on the mouse and one on the keyboard and not both hands on the keyboard.

If you're bringing in your own means of production, what is the company for?

I don't think that's true. Trades usually have their own equipment. At least for the small stuff on the order of keyboards and mice.

Either that's true (sometimes it is!), and you should do it, or it's false, and the company is providing something after all.

i think its just about being an environment where you're comfortable to ask questions - and some candidates also, maybe through insecurity are also unwilling to seek guidance.