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Ask HN: What qualities do you look for in a junior developer?

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Re: Ask HN: What qualities do you look for in a junior developer?

#21

Post by gargarplex »

Find someone who codes for a hobby and have them show you a portfolio. Prove they can get things done. Who cares if they leveraged the internet for assistance? It's part of getting things done. Who cares if they don't know CS concepts? You're going to review all their code anyway. Most importantly, find someone who you enjoy spending time with and will enjoy investing mentoring hours into.

Another approach: break your backlog into piecemeal tasks and hire senior freelancers to do fixed work for fixed costs.

Re: Ask HN: What qualities do you look for in a junior developer?

#22

Post by gregmac »

hluska wrote: post #4

The interviews were so bad that I ultimately rejected all of the applicants. I also withdrew the position because it was wasting my time. Maybe you shouldn't hire juniors? Junior devs are an investment and we owe them respect and genuine mentorship. By definition, they will 'waste your time'. And frankly, if you can't afford seniors, your company's mentorship opportunities will be weak enough that the smart play for…

And to add to this: Juniors are cheaper in salary, but that doesn't mean they're cheaper.

Hiring is not free -- in fact by the sounds of it the OP has already spend at least tens of hours unsuccessfully trying to hire someone.

Mentoring time is not free. You're also paying them to learn (read docs, rework code, etc) whether you realize it or not.

There's also a very non-zero chance you're incurring technical debt at a high rate, and that may not be apparent until you go to fix bugs (and cause 15 more every time you do) or add new features (and need to rebuild half the software to do so).

Knowing how to build good, maintainable and supportable software comes with experience and this is what you're paying a senior for.

Re: Ask HN: What qualities do you look for in a junior developer?

#23

Post by clavalle »

For juniors I look for some background in the area I'm hiring in with some success in that area.

Mainly, though, I look for enthusiasm and eagerness to learn, the ability to communicate clearly, and intelligence. I also look for a balance of self-determination and the willingness to work through a problem on their own but also enough sense to know when and how the to ask the right questions when needed. Finally, honesty. If they've fluffed up their resume that is a red flag.

You are not going to be hiring senior level developers who've misclassified themselves. Juniors are going to take work; there is no avoiding that. Adjust your expectations to that reality and you will have a better chance of pulling in an employee that will do well for you over time.

Re: Ask HN: What qualities do you look for in a junior developer?

#24

Post by talmand »

>> Preferably, I would like to hire senior developers instead, but they are too expensive for my budget.

I think you will find you will save money in the long run if you hire senior developers if you actually do require senior-level development skills instead of expecting junior developers to do the same work for lower pay.

Re: Ask HN: What qualities do you look for in a junior developer?

#25

Post by abrongersma »

Some of the best engineers(junior/senior) I've found have come from community events. If you're on the hunt for some juniors then I recommend that you get our of your building and go to where the juniors are for the specific area of focus you're looking to hire for. These people have already shown the innovative that they're interested in learning more about that particular field and willing learn outside of the traditional 9-5. You can still run into bad apples, but it will help you look for key traits and behaviors that can increase the odds in your favor for attracting juniors that are coachable, self starters, or show an ability to grow.

Re: Ask HN: What qualities do you look for in a junior developer?

#26

Post by tyingq »

>Preferably, I would like to hire senior developers instead, but they are too expensive for my budget.

This feels like a red flag. Do you have existing, more senior, people that can oversee the work? If so, perhaps that's a valid trade-off. It won't reduce the overall cost though, just the monthly burn. More junior means slower delivery, or less quality. There's no free lunch.

Re: Ask HN: What qualities do you look for in a junior developer?

#28

Post by patmcc »

>>Preferably, I would like to hire senior developers instead, but they are too expensive for my budget.

It sounds like you're trying to hire cheap developers, not junior developers.

If you really want junior developers, you have to do a crazy thing; hire people that are actually junior (have very little experience) but have potential. If you'd done that 4 months ago you'd probably have some decent developers right now.

Re: Ask HN: What qualities do you look for in a junior developer?

#29

Post by franciscop »

Maybe you should make the first step a small automated coding challenge? No longer than 1-2h and it's a simple filter.

Finishing the challenge on itself will be the first filter; then you can review the ones who finished it and interview the ones you like most.

BTW if you are looking for a remote web dev (front-end or back-end) drop me a line "public at francisco.io" <= my CV.

Re: Ask HN: What qualities do you look for in a junior developer?

#30

Post by 8draco8 »

First of all I can't believe that there was not even one decent junior dev among 400+. Last year I was in the same position as you but received far less applications (15-20). 3 of them was decent, one of them we employed and he turned out much better than on paper.

Main thing is to give them homework: not more than 2 hours project that they will solve at home and commit to private repo. Make it unique enough to avoid stackoverflow copy-pastes. Do not give them academic problems, ask them to create real world examples. For example: create CRUD that does something specific like file uploads with resize or similar; access unreliable API and do something with it; create calendar that allows multiple tasks per day (UI/UX); scrape data from the website and put it in to DB.

Those are just examples, but they are easy enough to do in under 2 hours and you can test results in under 2 minutes. Out of those 400+ applications, half of them will not even bother spending 2 hours on a task, then in a day or two you will restrict that remaining ones to about 50-60 just by checking results of the task. Rest are just personal interviews. Just remember to write a feedback email even to those unsuccessful applications.

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