Why We Need to Foster Junior Developers Link to heading

Watching Dave’s video got me thinking about the impact of not fostering Junior Developers, which can lead to serious issues. It also highlighted the importance of retaining Senior Developers and encouraging them to pass their skills on.

The lack of nurturing by Senior Developers can create lasting challenges. Just look at what is happening in the computer games industry. Games from 10 years ago often look and feel better than many of the newer games from “Triple A” studios. This has also led to massive failures, such as the $400 million Concord project.

Concord, a multiplayer first-person hero shooter developed by Firewalk Studios, was intended as a tentpole title with aspirations of becoming a Star Wars-level franchise. Despite its eight-year development cycle and massive budget, it suffered from mixed reviews, low sales, and a rapid shutdown two weeks after launch. Sony refunded all copies and eventually closed Firewalk Studios, halting development entirely. The lack of strong leadership and vision contributed to this high-profile failure.

Another example is Dragon Age: The Veilguard, developed by BioWare. Like Concord, it faced significant challenges, including the departure of experienced developers and frequent reassignments of team members to other projects. This led to inconsistent writing, a lack of narrative coherence, Both cases highlight the consequences of losing experienced talent and failing to nurture the next generation.

While this trend puzzles many, it seems clear to me: it’s a generational shift. Experienced developers have moved on, and without their guidance, Juniors are left to navigate complex projects on their own. This often leads to stakeholders pulling them in conflicting directions, lacking the necessary technical insight.

These thoughts were sparked by Dave’s video: Senior Developers vs. Junior Developers, What’s The Difference?. It got me thinking about how vital it is to foster Junior Developers and ensure they grow into the Senior roles we’ll need in the future.

What do you think? Is there a solution to this growing gap between generations of developers? How can we ensure the continuous development of expertise in an ever-changing industry?

For now comments are on LinkedIn in so please comment on my post there: Are we doing enough to foster the next generation of developers?