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Ask HN: How do you define a junior developer?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you define a junior developer?

#21

Post by beat »

"Do you have ten years of experience, or do you have one year of experience ten times?"

A junior programmer is someone who has never learned from a serious mistake they've made while programming professionally. A junior programmer is someone who thinks they should be senior thanks to the Dunning-Kruger Effect ("Hey, I was an honors student at this great college!"). A junior programmer is someone who can't usefully mentor anyone else. A junior programmer is someone who is not aware of the downstream impacts of their decisions, and is not aware that they're not aware of it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you define a junior developer?

#23

Post by overallduka »

mrmekon wrote: post #16

It depends on when and why I'm defining it, but my guidelines are more based on how they work than what they know: * Junior developer - Will not produce much business value if left alone, and may produce nothing at all. Requires supervision. * Intermediate developer - Will produce something if left alone, but not necessarily what the business most needs. Needs minimal supervision, but defined goals. * Senior develope…

I think your definition is perfect! But in some cases senior is considered the guy who have 5+ years of experience in certain field/language.

Re: Ask HN: How do you define a junior developer?

#24

Post by overallduka »

mrmekon wrote: post #16

It depends on when and why I'm defining it, but my guidelines are more based on how they work than what they know: * Junior developer - Will not produce much business value if left alone, and may produce nothing at all. Requires supervision. * Intermediate developer - Will produce something if left alone, but not necessarily what the business most needs. Needs minimal supervision, but defined goals. * Senior develope…

I think your definition is perfect! But in some cases senior is considered the guy who have 5+ years of experience in certain field/language.

Re: Ask HN: How do you define a junior developer?

#25

Post by x3ro »

bflesch wrote: post #20
mrmekon wrote: post #16

It depends on when and why I'm defining it, but my guidelines are more based on how they work than what they know: * Junior developer - Will not produce much business value if left alone, and may produce nothing at all. Requires supervision. * Intermediate developer - Will produce something if left alone, but not necessarily what the business most needs. Needs minimal supervision, but defined goals. * Senior develope…

There's so much truth in this. I think it is very hard to hire actually senior developers which fit your definition, because most people who work a couple of years in the industry tend to over-emphasize their seniority. If they did not work with exactly the tools and programming languages / libraries of the job that is described in the job offer at hand, their performance ends up more in the junior part of the scale…

> If they did not work with exactly the tools and programming languages / libraries of the job that is described in the job offer at hand, their performance ends up more in the junior part of the scale and it will cost you dearly.

This seems to be the exact opposite of what the OP said, is it not?

Clarifying edit: It seems like you're saying that you need to have worked with a certain tech-stack for 10 years to be considered a senior developer, whereas the OP seems to be advocating that a "senior developer" will be able to handle any tech stack you throw at them in a reasonable amount of time. Their knowledge of the tech stack may impact their speed at first, but not the quality of the result.

Re: Ask HN: How do you define a junior developer?

#26

Post by quantumhobbit »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #5

Junior developer is someone who was unable to negotiate a stronger position for any reason, such as experience, recent unemployment, expertise in an outside specialty, company is super tightwad about 'status' and/or pay levels, naive about negotiation, etc. Conversely, sometimes you'll also see someone at a 'senior' level because the title meant more to them than pay or other benefits. Sometimes a title distinction i…

You're getting down voted for expressing the reality as opposed to the the platonic ideal. Ideally junior/senior implies something about ability to work independently, but there are plenty of crappy places where job titles bear no relation to actual abilities. Acknowledging that the meritocracy doesn't work perfectly seems to piss people off around here.

Re: Ask HN: How do you define a junior developer?

#27

Post by bflesch »

x3ro wrote: post #25
bflesch wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's so much truth in this. I think it is very hard to hire actually senior developers which fit your definition, because most people who work a couple of years in the industry tend to over-emphasize their seniority. If they did not work with exactly the tools and programming languages / libraries of the job that is described in the job offer at hand, their performance ends up more in the junior part of the scale…

> If they did not work with exactly the tools and programming languages / libraries of the job that is described in the job offer at hand, their performance ends up more in the junior part of the scale and it will cost you dearly. This seems to be the exact opposite of what the OP said, is it not? Clarifying edit: It seems like you're saying that you need to have worked with a certain tech-stack for 10 years to be co…

I wanted to get the point accross that even when all checkboxes are checked in terms of programming language etc they might end up with junior level productivity (after training+grace period) because for example the project scope is different.

Re: Ask HN: How do you define a junior developer?

#28

Post by quantumhobbit »

echelon wrote: post #18
p4wnc6 wrote: post #5

Junior developer is someone who was unable to negotiate a stronger position for any reason, such as experience, recent unemployment, expertise in an outside specialty, company is super tightwad about 'status' and/or pay levels, naive about negotiation, etc. Conversely, sometimes you'll also see someone at a 'senior' level because the title meant more to them than pay or other benefits. Sometimes a title distinction i…

This is absolutely not true. I would expect a senior engineer to come into a new job and be able to propose the design a new service very quickly - its API, architecture, datastores (including sharding, replication, active-active multi-master designs, ...), DR strategy, how it fits into the ecosystem, how to scale it to thousands of QPS, etc.

I would too, but I have worked with plenty of people with the word senior in their title who wouldn't be able to do a any of that. I've also met "juniors" who do carry the world and build great systems.

The problem is that titles get inflated and can't be relied on as much as we would hope.

Re: Ask HN: How do you define a junior developer?

#29

Post by 35bge57dtjku »

LouisRoR wrote: post #19

I'm a non-technical recruiter. I get triggered when people confuse Entry & Junior developers: Entry - Cant be trusted on their own - need hand holding. Junior - Can be trusted on their own - like a slow mid-level developer - might need to check their code a bit after but generally know what they are doing with a little input from more senior developers in the team.

How would a non-technical recruiter know about developers and what's the difference between you and a technical recruiter?
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