I'm pretty sure any top student coming out of their course thinks they're a good developer already with all the right answers. To ensure they DO ask good questions I think providing mentoring for junior developers is probably one of the more effective investments you can make.
Agreed. As the above type of eager young developer, I can say it has been rather disappointing the lack of mentoring and direction at my first job. Junior programmers are just assigned to a task and expected to complete it. Programmers that don't ask questions and bug other more experienced developers don't survive. Developers like myself learn the ropes after a while, but it's frustrating to have no real direction or encouragement.
I know this probably comes off as the comments of a naive young programmer, but I sort of expected that companies would have some level of formal or informal training. I thought I might even be sent to attend developer events or conferences. At the very least I expected there might be some sort of formal internal forum for knowledge sharing, presentations, etc.
Because of (what feels like) a lack of skill advancement, I spend the majority of my free time playing around with technologies I feel like I should be learning at work. But at most companies there seems to be this "We're not paying your to learn" attitude. It's very disheartening coming from a university environment. Plus it seems kind of self-destructive in some cases; if a company as a whole falls behind its competitors technologically, how can it be effective as a business in the technology sector?
I suppose by posting this i'm just making an argument for why i'm a nailgun/drywall saw type of guy. Hopefully the transition to a working environment will only get easier.
What you're describing is, unfortunately, standard practice in the industry - and has been for a long time. I've been around for a while and have been as frustrated by it as you. (Sorry for self-quoting, but I wrote about this in the last bit of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3341058)
This may not be what you want to hear, but in my experience, organizations don't change much, so take your hopeful energy and channel it into finding (or starting) something else that is better. Hacker meetups and open-source projects are two ways to interact with other programmers. As far as work goes, try to find (or start) a place with a culture of collaboration. They're rare but do exist. The trouble is that absolutely everybody will say "yes" when asked if their culture values collaboration, mentorship, etc., and you need some way to cut through the bullshit. Best way I know is by knowing a person who works there.
I lot of companies have real mentors. Ask about that before starting somewhere. Find out who your boss is. Ask them questions.
A lot of startups are bad at this because they're, well, starting up. I'm a big believer in mentoring, but a lot of startups I worked for didn't appreciate this at all. Just gotta keep looking.
