yeah it's true, you do have to guide them. i find that the key is you have to know what's possible. you have to have the instinct for "this really shouldn't be so difficult". my junior SWE coworkers have the same trouble as your coworkers.

but the revolution is it doesn't take that long. in like 15 minutes you can chat with fable and get to the meat of whatever the issue is with repeated questioning. and then it does the solution for you. so it's not magic but it's still like a 100x speedup.