Your company needs Junior devs
您的公司需要初級開發人員

Getting coffee with a bunch of local tech leaders, I surprised myself with how stridently I argued why companies should hire junior engineers.
和一群當地科技領袖喝咖啡時，我驚訝自己是多麼激烈地辯論為什麼公司應該聘用初級工程師。

Lately, BigTech only wants elite squads of Staff devs that can “hit the ground running” on the big (often AI) initiative. It’s been remarked (over and over) that AI will completely replace junior developers. Juniors, after all, exist to do “code monkey” work, easily replaced with an LLM.
最近，大型科技公司只想要精英開發團隊，能夠在大型（通常是 AI）計劃上“迅速上手”。人們已經多次提到（多次和多次）AI 將完全取代初級開發人員。畢竟，初級開發人員的存在是為了做“程式碼猴子”的工作，這些工作可以輕易地被LLM取代。

However, that misses the mark on why we have junior employees. Coaching junior employees becomes its own force multiplier for innovating at scale. It’s not about the added labor, it’s about a psychologically safe culture that values teaching and learning, and the innovation that this unlocks.
然而，這忽略了我們為何需要初級員工。指導初級員工本身成為了在大規模創新中的一種力量倍增器。這不僅僅是增加勞動力，而是關於一種重視教學和學習的心理安全文化，以及由此釋放的創新。

Junior Talent forces your team to teach, coach, collaborate
初級人才迫使你的團隊進行教學、指導和合作

What does it say about an organization that “ships”, but doesn’t collaborate?
一個「發貨」但不合作的組織，這說明了什麼？

In their article The Knowledge-Creating Company, Nonaka and Takeuchi argue that Japanese companies out innovated Western counterparts in the 80s/90s because of their focus on knowledge:
在他們的文章 知識創造型公司 中，野中郁次郎和竹內弘高認為，日本公司在 80 年代和 90 年代的創新能力超越了西方同行，因為他們專注於知識

few managers grasp the true nature of the knowledge-creating company—let alone know how to manage it. The reason: They misunderstand what knowledge is and what companies must do to exploit it.
很少有管理者能夠理解知識創造型公司的真正本質，更不用說知道如何管理它。原因在於：他們誤解了知識的含義以及公司必須做什麼來利用它。

Western companies, they argue, see the “assembly line” of a knowledge firm. They see the outputs: KPIs, OKRs, Quarterly results. If you only think in terms of the assembly line, you will only seek units of input that increase those outputs (ie expert employees that ‘hit the ground running’ to churn out higher metrics).
西方公司，他們認為，看到的是知識公司的“流水線”。他們看到的是產出：關鍵績效指標、目標與關鍵結果、季度業績。如果你只從流水線的角度思考，你只會尋求那些能增加這些產出的投入單位（即能迅速上手的專業員工，以產出更高的指標）。

However, as Nonaka and Takeuchi remark:
然而，正如野中郁次郎和竹內弘高所言：

Making personal knowledge available to others is the central activity of the knowledge-creating company.
將個人知識提供給他人是知識創造型公司的核心活動。

Innovative companies prioritize teaching, spreading, sharing knowledge. Ingraining knowledge into the company’s DNA matters more than a single developer shipping that next brilliant new feature.
創新公司優先考慮教學、傳播和分享知識。將知識深植於公司的 DNA 中，比單一開發者推出下一個精彩新功能更為重要。

Further, it turns out – knowledge discovery IS innovation.
進一步來說，事實證明 – 知識發現就是創新。

Teaching helps not just the juniors, but the seniors too. The “Protege effect” is a well studied phenomenon where the teacher’s knowledge deepens when required to teach. Juniors force-multiply seniors, not by writing code, but just by forcing seniors to teach and rethink their knowledge.
教學不僅幫助初學者，也幫助資深者。“受教者效應”是一個經過充分研究的現象，當教師需要教學時，他們的知識會加深。初學者通過迫使資深者教學和重新思考他們的知識來增強資深者的能力，而不是通過編寫代碼。

Redundancy - overlap in focus area - undergirds this whole process. Again from Nonaka and Takeuchi:
冗餘 - 焦點領域的重疊 - 支撐著整個過程。再次引用野中郁次郎和竹內弘高：

Redundancy is important because it encourages frequent dialogue and communication. This helps create a “common cognitive ground” among employees and thus facilitates the transfer of tacit knowledge
冗餘是重要的，因為它鼓勵頻繁的對話和交流。這有助於在員工之間建立“共同的認知基礎”，從而促進隱性知識的轉移。

Juniors become this redundancy. They absorb company tribal knowledge, reprocess it, internalize it, translate it to explicit knowledge. It helps seniors become aware of their assumptions, question them, refine them. To act as a Socratic dialog to ensure you’re actually on the right path. Such redundancy extends beyond innovating, to the simple team needs of fixing bugs and being on-call at 3AM so your senior devs don’t collapse from burnout.
初級員工成為這種冗餘。他們吸收公司的部落知識，重新處理它，內化它，將其轉化為明確的知識。這幫助資深員工意識到他們的假設，質疑它們，並加以完善。這就像一種蘇格拉底式的對話，以確保你確實走在正確的道路上。這種冗餘不僅限於創新，還延伸到修復錯誤和在凌晨三點待命的簡單團隊需求，以免你的資深開發人員因過勞而崩潰。

Generalists innovate better than specialists
通才的創新能力優於專家

As argued in the book Range - generalists often bring innovative ideas to the table. The Wright Brothers are a classic example of non-expert, tinkering bicycle mechanics that end up inventing a flying machine. NoSQL databases come from distributed systems tinkerers, not relational database experts.
在書籍《範圍》中提到 - 通才經常帶來創新的想法。萊特兄弟是非專家、喜歡修補的自行車技師的經典例子，最終發明了飛行器。NoSQL 數據庫來自於分佈式系統的修補者，而不是關聯數據庫專家。

Junior employees come prepared with that Socratic dialog: to ask dumb questions and seek their answers. Often, it turns out, experts – through ego or blindness - don’t see obvious solutions. They don’t question tacit assumptions. Juniors on the other hand eagerly crash into, and sometimes through, problems seniors have convinced themselves are too hard. Juniors try “dumb” things that often fail, but sometimes show how blinded experts have become from their long held assumptions.
初級員工帶著蘇格拉底式的對話來到工作中：提出愚蠢的問題並尋求答案。事實上，專家們往往因為自我或盲目而看不見明顯的解決方案。他們不質疑默認的假設。另一方面，初級員工熱衷於衝進，甚至穿越，資深員工自以為過於困難的問題。初級員工嘗試“愚蠢”的做法，這些做法常常失敗，但有時卻顯示出專家們因長期持有的假設而變得多麼盲目。

Some of the great ideas come from junior employees:
一些偉大的想法來自初級員工：

• Jack Dorsey had the idea for Twitter as a junior employee of a podcast company
  傑克·多爾西在擔任一間播客公司的初級員工時，構思了推特的想法
• Post-it notes were invented by junior employees Spencer Silver and Art Fry at 3M
  便利貼是由 3M 的初級員工斯賓塞·西爾弗和阿特·弗萊發明的
• Firefox was a side project of Blake Ross while working at Netscape
  Firefox 是布雷克·羅斯在網景工作時的副項目

Juniors come from more diverse backgrounds than seniors (in every sense of the word). Leading to ways of thinking and perspectives that seniors totally miss.
大三學生來自比大四學生更為多樣的背景（在每一個意義上）。這導致了思維方式和觀點，大四學生完全忽略了。

Juniors mean psychological safety means more innovation
初級生意味著心理安全意味著更多創新

The term psychological safety in organizational literature stems from a 1999 paper by Amy Edmonson
在組織文獻中，心理安全這個術語源自於艾米·艾德蒙森於 1999 年發表的一篇論文

The fundamental quote, in the abstract:
基本的引用，抽象地說：

Team psychological safety is associated with learning behavior, team efficacy is not
團隊心理安全與學習行為相關，團隊效能則不然

(efficacy == perceived competence)
（效能 == 感知能力）

Creating environments where coaching is the norm, lead to increased psychological safety. Team members readily admit mistakes, and report errors.
創造以輔導為常態的環境，能提高心理安全感。團隊成員樂於承認錯誤並報告失誤。

In short, cultures of learning beget psychological safety. Psychological safety begets learning. Learning and innovation go hand in hand.
簡而言之，學習文化孕育心理安全。心理安全孕育學習。學習與創新密切相關。

This is somehat in contrast to group cohesiveness, a tightly related long-term group of colleagues. Such cohesiveness can:
這在某種程度上與團隊凝聚力形成對比，團隊凝聚力是一群緊密相關的長期同事。這種凝聚力可以：

reduce willingness to disagree and challenge others’ views, such as in the phenomenon of groupthink, implying a lack of interpersonal risk taking.
降低對不同意見和挑戰他人觀點的意願，例如在集體思維現象中，暗示缺乏人際風險承擔。

A stable team of long-term colleagues falls into groupthink and loses some ability to innovate. They sometimes form an immune system to outside ideas and experience. Onboarding anyone, especially juniors may seem like an annoying chore, as the colleagues don’t enjoy teaching and learning. We’ve all met that entrenched employee living in their knowledge silo, not excited to open their work up to others. They lose that “learning behavior” muscle.
一支穩定的長期同事團隊陷入了集體思維，失去了一些創新能力。他們有時會對外部想法和經驗形成一種免疫系統。培訓任何人，尤其是初級員工，可能看起來像是一項令人厭煩的工作，因為同事們不喜歡教學和學習。我們都遇到過那種固守自己知識孤島的員工，他們對向他人開放自己的工作並不感興趣。他們失去了那種“學習行為”的能力。

“Learning behaviors”, crucially, include the ability to experiment - something I hear endlessly that more teams wish they had. This translates trying new approaches, running more A/B tests, being willing to try product directions that don’t work out (but sometimes do). Founders often talk about “failing fast”, but founders/managers/etc can also be their own worse enemy: wanting only the experts who already have all the answers, rather that juniors hungry to find new answers.
「學習行為」至關重要地包括實驗的能力——我不斷聽到更多團隊希望擁有這種能力。這意味著嘗試新的方法，進行更多的 A/B 測試，願意嘗試那些不奏效（但有時會奏效）的產品方向。創始人經常談論「快速失敗」，但創始人/經理等也可能是自己最大的敵人：只想要那些已經擁有所有答案的專家，而不是渴望尋找新答案的初級員工。

Your org suffers from not hiring juniors
你的組織因為沒有聘用初級員工而受到影響

Many of these themes begin to overlap: hire juniors that want to learn. Hire seniors that want to teach. Those who can’t teach, maybe shouldn’t be allowed to “do”.
許多這些主題開始重疊：聘請想學習的初級員工。聘請想教學的資深員工。那些無法教學的人，也許不應該被允許“做”。

I see a team much like a health University research lab. The platonic idea senior is open-minded and eager to be challenged. Eager to unlearn their expertise to find a new path. Along with juniors who come in enthusiastic to absorb knowledge like a sponge, asking naive questions that draw out new ideas and shake foundations.
我看到一個團隊就像一所健康大學的研究實驗室。理想中的資深成員心胸開闊，渴望接受挑戰。渴望放下他們的專業知識，以尋找新的道路。還有那些熱情洋溢的初級成員，像海綿一樣吸收知識，提出天真的問題，激發出新的想法並動搖基礎。

That’s what it feels like to be on a high-performing team. Individuals open to ideas, eager to share credit, and avoid blame. Shipping constantly, sharing wins and learnings, and believing in the team.
這就是在高效能團隊中所感受到的。成員們樂於接受想法，渴望分享功勞，並避免責怪。持續交付，分享成功和學習，並相信團隊。

Or at least, in my opinion, that’s 50% of the puzzle. The other 50% requires an interface to the “outside world” that protects this team, sells its internal chaos as a cohesive narrative, and works with investors and stakeholders to translate messy experiments into a glorious tale of progress. Sadly, many executives mistake this outer chrome of leadership for the entire system, ignoring the internal combustion engine of teaching and learning that makes it run.
或者至少在我看來，這是謎題的 50%。另外 50%需要一個與“外部世界”的介面，這個介面保護這個團隊，將其內部的混亂包裝成一個連貫的敘事，並與投資者和利益相關者合作，將混亂的實驗轉化為一個輝煌的進步故事。可悲的是，許多高管將這種外在的領導光環誤認為整個系統，忽視了使其運行的教學和學習的內部動力引擎。

If this isn’t your culture, I’m glad to grab a coffee to talk about what I’ve seen (and where I’ve failed!)
如果這不是你的文化，我很高興能喝杯咖啡談談我所見到的（以及我在哪裡失敗了！）