I have been asked to be a buddy for a colleague on our team who is 1.5 years less experience than me (I have 3.5 years) but who may actually be at the same grade / level as I’m still considered junior/midlevel.

The reason I was asked to be a buddy is because this engineer, let’s call them J, was struggling to complete their first task. What should have taken < 1 month took 8.

I’ve been in this mentory type relationship with J for 1.5 months now. At the start it was rocky, I didn’t feel like J wanted me to mentor them or my help, as when I asked about what they wanted to get out of it they just said “my manager said you wanted to be my mentor”. Also they agreed to meet me in the office and never turned up that day. They said they were there but I looked for them all over and they went offline at 2pm.

I raised these concerns at the time with my manager and they clarified with them the purpose and also assured me that my performance isn’t related to theirs and that I don’t need to manage them at all or monitor them.

Once this happened, J picked up a new task (after they asked me which one to pick). I suggested a task that would be small and easy for them. But from the beginning they were frequently asking me what to do next and I felt like I was required to guide them to their next step each time. Their task was a simple POC of a terraform module that another team had already implemented. However for the first 3 days they spent the time reading background information. They took another week to write a document that didn’t include any POC/testing and asked me to review. I had to explain the purpose of the POC and I suggested they present to the team as well.

I noticed very inaccurate updates on stand up. They would report that they tested in x environment but I would check and it hasn’t been run for 3 days and there were no commits. When I reached out asking if everything was ok they would sometimes just say they were studying for an exam. I’m not meant to be managing so I just let them do that. But the inaccurate updates in stand up sometimes causes misunderstanding. Also despite suggesting they present the POC to the team twice, J updated on stand up they would be closing the ticket. I had to remind them to present a 3rd time, which ultimately helped them gain some respect in the team. Although parts of it were shaky it showed they broadly did the work. However I’m not sure if they understand what they did because again, they updated that they released it to x environment when they hadn’t even created a PR and the environment was pointing to main.

Anyway, there have been a lot of headaches for me, and it’s a bit disappointing to think that J and myself could be getting the same salary and have the same role. I think I have been doing 3x more work.

I already complained once to my manager at the beginning so I feel now I have to keep it quiet unless they bring it up? I think from my non technical managers perspective the updates and progress from J have greatly improved since I’ve been helping them. But almost everything they did it was bc I told them to do it and how. There were a few days I noticed no changes or commits and I paired with them for 20 minutes to guide them on what to do. And the next day they give an update that reflects only those 20 min.

I feel that they struggle with problem solving and critical thinking. I also think, while I have been trying a lot to help them and also push back and suggest that they work on things independently that it almost seems like they want to be blocked. When they have encountered issues in their IDE, they spent hours making no progress on it despite me pointing them in the right direction.

Anyway, Im going to start setting boundaries now and try to avoid doing so much. I think I will keep documenting these performance issues but keep it to myself for now unless my manager specifically asks for feedback on J’s performance.

Does that sound like a good plan?