What do you do if your game developers need help improving their technical skills?

You can throw some advanced-level game development courses at them or bury them under a mountain of projects and hope for some miracle improvement. But let's be real—these methods might eventually work, but it’ll be like waiting for a tortoise to finish a marathon. The real problem is that there's no one to point out inefficiencies in their code or suggest better approaches, and no one to teach them which design patterns would be helpful. The solution? By pairing them with veteran developers, they not only learn these things but also improve their communication and team collaboration. This practice naturally fosters an amazing work culture that helps the team grow stronger and happier.

When I started my journey as a developer, I needed help to grow my skills. My seniors guided me through mentorship, sharing their knowledge and solving problems together. This support made a big difference in my learning and helped me become a better developer.

Start by identifying specific areas where improvement is needed. Offer training opportunities such as workshops, online courses, or access to industry conferences that focus on relevant technologies or practices. Encourage knowledge sharing within the team, where more experienced developers can mentor others through pair programming or code reviews. Provide resources like documentation, tutorials, and access to new tools to foster continuous learning. Implement a culture of feedback and learning by setting up regular skill assessments and setting clear development goals.

On job mentoring fellow developers is a continuous support process that needs to be done. I disagree that only junior devs need guidance, even senior devs can be hard headed in their ways and can learn some new things. Learnings can come from anyone, important thing is to have a culture of learning and exploration of idea's.

Todas las opciones propuestas en el artículo son válidas y pueden ser muy provechosas según el contexto. Considero que es más complicado saber cual aplicar en cada momento y con que perfiles es viable y con cuales NO. Entre las planteadas y otras que no se mencionan, hay propuestas que según el perfil predominante o incluso aunque sea un solo individuo si este tiene el suficiente peso nivel de liderazgo en el equipo, que pueden producir rechazo y generar el efecto contrario al que se busca, no olvidemos que para aprender y adquirir nuevas habilidades se necesita establecer un entorno favorable y confiable para ello.

Online courses and tutorials I find that are good to get an introduction to a topic but rarely they give depth needed for significant advancement in knowledge or insights. It's better for someone to explore deeply the documentation provided and/or experient with the tool, features, SDK etc to see what it is capable of.

Esto es algo muy socorrido para las mentes más inquietas del equipo a las que les guste ir a su ritmo. Poner a disposición, de forma abierta, una buena plataforma de formación especializada, al equipo solo puede suponer beneficios para todo aquellos con hambre de conocimiento, que por otro lado es una de las cualidades que nos debería haber interesado incluir a la hora de conformar el equipo.

By far the best way to learn something, given by someone who has done it and has insights and learnings that can boost teams learning by multiple folds. Limitation is that you need to be inside a company to get these kinds of learnings. Rarely I have seen good insights and learnings given on a public forums.

Para los más inquietos y proactivos, si se les ofrece la opción de montar estos talleres con referentes del tema en concreto esto será un buen reclamo pero es fácil que el coste de esta alternativa, en comparación al partido que se le saque sea negativo bien por la predisposición de los miembros que asistan, bien por el escaso interés, expectativas o directamente porque no son tan proactivos como aprovecharlo.

Bueno,.... de por si la palabra "revisiones" tiene una serie de connotaciones no muy agradables para los desarrolladores. Obviamente, son necesarias, pero de ahí a plantearlo como motivador o que sea algo que invite a aprender,.... es algo que se tiene que hacer y en este sentido para que sea algo que además permita crecer al los miembros del equipo y no tomárselo a mal, debería trabajarse mucho en la mentalidad a la hora de aceptar lo que a priori se pueden percibir como algo de aspecto crítico. Una opción es incluir técnicas de gamificación en este proceso.

1. In Teams Upto 5 People. Peer coding with code reviews are a great way to get done work faster while having fun conversation with colleagues. 2. In Small Teams 10+ At End Of The Project's Github Branch 1.1.1 Version the Admin or Senior Developer/Architect will review code and do unit testing before pushing it into Master Branch. 3. In Larger Teams of 100 + People You can also use automation testing and CI/CD pipelines. 4. You can use SDLC lifecycle based tools to manage your application staging, testing, deployment all from one place.

1. Project Rotation keeps changing powerful people from playing office politics from only 1 project by hiring their favourites and firing the rest. 2. It avoids the stressful from deadlines of a single project by the same group as they are rotated with new projects. 3. Intern Developers become master of all trades by rotating projects and trying everything before which one suits them or not. 4. Incentives could be decided upon which group finishes maximum percentage % tasks of a project before time. This will keep developers motivated to work on the tasks at hand. This tracking could be achieved by some project management or tracking tools.

Also an excellent way for devs to challenge themselves and learn something new. I have learned so much more by just trying out some hobby projects or experimenting with some minor project in a new language or framework. There is always something new to learn in the world.

1. Always prioritise hiring developers who have done similar projects compared to those who have just got fancy degrees - Even Google hired Creator of Python/Angular/Gmail/Gnews etc and allowed 20% time to work on it. 2. If some developer is unable to find time for personal projects or has copied somebody else's project avoid hiring them - you can find out that by googling project name/category/type example: a cards game of poker could be copied but a teenpatti game is hard to copy as there are not enough opensource codes of it on internet. 3. Addition or improvement to others code - bug fixing, adding gui/skins/themes/designs on top of someone else code or making a xbox game from an existing windows game is a sign of a better developer.