[svilen_dobrev]

> We must keep hiring EiC (i.e. newbies) developers, accept that they initially reduce capacity, and deliberately design systems that make their growth an explicit organizational goal. ...

this has always been the case - even the Mythical man-month stated so.

One has to allow some slack for the experts, essentially having them as teachers - as investment in future people. Which means - the system as it is should not change much in essence. Whether i talk to a junior about his own code or about some(body|thing)-else's code, should not be much difference to me, though it might be harder for the junior as s/he would not have been internalising/producing the code but only gazing at it. Probably there should be some work done manually, maybe in parallel to the automated one, regardless of the speed, for the sake of learning by doing.

IMO the suggested structure of preceptors (i.e. mentors) with students can be separate only for a short term but then has to be embedded in the usual projects etc work, for much longer time. Which again is what we have now, though it has to be named and made explicit and not hand-waved, or there would be a lot of "spent-3-years-but-learned-nothing" people.