The teacher's nemesis
A few months ago I wrote Learning and Reviewing System Internals - Tactics and Psychology . One thing I touched on was how it is necessary to create a mental model in order to grok a codebase, or learn how a complex system works. The mental model gets developed piece by piece, using a layer of abstractions.
Today I am also writing about mental models and abstractions, but from the perspective of team leaders, and senior engineers, and their role in onboarding new team members. In this context, the team lead and senior engineers are teachers and how effective they are has a material impact on the success of the team. However, there are real challenges and leaders can fail without being aware of it, with potentially poor outcomes if left unaddressed.
How does one teach an engineer about how a complex system works? You arm them with a high quality mental model, one that gets progressively more complex as they peel back the layers.
