Internmaxxing

Somebody on your timeline this week called intern code "API slop." Confident. A little smug. Probably got a few hundred likes.

It's bullshit.

I run a cohort. About half my team is interns right now. I gave them equity options ahead of schedule because I'm not interested in pretending the work is junior when it isn't. The projects shipping out of that group are robust. Production worthy. The kind of thing that would have taken a "senior" three years and a wiki page full of excuses a decade ago.

That's not a feel-good story. That's the new baseline.

The wave is already here

There are about to be 100 million new developers. Not "learning to code" in the 2014 bootcamp sense. Building. Shipping. Wiring up systems that work, fast, because the tools finally let them move at the speed of their ideas instead of the speed of their tooling.

You can meet that as a threat or as the best thing that has happened to this field in twenty years. The math doesn't care which you pick. The wave lands either way.

So the only real question is what you want to be when it does. The person who helped, or the guy in the replies explaining why it doesn't count.

Reverse charisma

Here is the thing nobody tells you about seniority.

The instinct, once you have been around, is to project. Be the top dog. The enlightened one who has seen it all and isn't impressed. You drop the knowing comment. You point out the edge case they missed. You make sure everyone in the room understands the gap between what they know and what you know.

And even when you are right, you are wrong.

Because the actual flex is the opposite. Real authority doesn't announce itself. It makes the other person feel capable. It makes them better and lets them keep the credit. The people you remember as great mentors were never the ones performing brilliance at you. They were the ones who made you feel like the smartest version of yourself and then quietly handed you something harder.

I call it reverse charisma. Stop trying to be the most impressive person in the room. Be the reason someone else is.

If you walk in as the pompous prick who needs everyone to know you are right, you can win every technical argument and still lose. Being correct and insufferable is just being insufferable with extra steps.

Internmaxxing, actually

So what does supporting them look like in practice. Not vibes. Behavior.

Compliment the work. Out loud, specifically, in front of people. "This is clean" costs you nothing and it rewires how someone shows up the next morning.

Give them real ownership. Not the ticket nobody wanted. The thing that matters, with you close enough to catch a fall but far enough that they own the landing.

Mentor instead of correct. There is a version of every piece of feedback that teaches and a version that just establishes who is smarter. Pick the first one every time.

Pay them like you believe it. Equity, real responsibility, a seat at the table early. If you think they are going to be great, act like it before it is convenient.

The fun part

The old-man-yelling-at-cloud bit is available to all of us. It is free. It also sucks.

The other path is collaboration. The actual excitement of watching someone get good, fast, right in front of you. Camaraderie. Building something with people who are hungry instead of guarding turf against them.

One of those is a lot more fun than the other.

I know which room I want to be in.