Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Who Killed the Junior Developer?

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 803 posts

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#81

Post by a_t48 »

mooreds wrote: post #39

It is a tragedy of the commons scenario. Everyone wants senior devs, who were at one point junior devs. No one wants to train junior devs. The OP points out why: * cheaper to have juniorish work done overseas * juniorish work is automated away * juniors on a team slow it down (compared to a team of all seniors) So everyone competes for the senior talent. A more sophisticated long term analysis might look at the benef…

Junior devs can also be great for sticking on smaller\simpler\more rote things that might be boring for a senior developer, but for a junior is new territory. Depending on the size\complexity of your codebase, a senior will take lot of time to actually be useful anyhow.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#82

Post by a_t48 »

AFNobody wrote: post #75
CydeWeys wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A key point that you're missing is that junior devs are likely to jump ship at least once in their career trajectory before they become senior devs. So yes, junior devs do need to be trained by someone , but if you're going to put in a lot of work and not receive much of the benefit, it's not in your best interest. There's a variety of reasons for why devs jump ship so often (including compensation), but unless you c…

Market rate compensation, non-toxic culture, and realistic expectations for work output solves 90% of the reasons reasonable people leave jobs. People claim all sorts of reasons for leaving jobs but its always one of those three or uncertainty about company longevity. (i.e. acquisition/financial difficulties for the company) The other 10% is people who are naive or have a family/relocation related issue that you can…

Comeon now, there are more reasons than that for people to leave, like a new exciting opportunity appearing.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#83

Post by Clubber »

emodendroket wrote: post #36
maxxxxx wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's something I have noticed too. In the 90s most people I worked with were genuinely interested in the work and often came from very eclectic backgrounds. Almost nobody had a CS degree. Now it seems a lot of people go into programming because it pays well and looks like a good career but they don't really care for tech. I definitely found the industry more fun in the 90s but that may just be the fact it's becomin…

I don't think someone necessarily has to live and breathe code to be good at their job. That kind of focus is hard to maintain forever. When I was new I was constantly reading programming books and now, like, I'm still interested, but other things are going on in my life that also need my attention, you know?

Yes, for me it's up and down. I do side projects a lot more when I'm sick of the company I'm at. Trying to get out of the grind.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#84

Post by broodbucket »

Apocryphon wrote: post #54
broodbucket wrote: post #33

Is the junior job shortage just a valley bubble thing? I'm a young dev and there are grad/entry level positions everywhere I look, none of my peers have really had issues either. How good (or bad) companies are at actually training their employees is another matter. edit: typo

Well, where are you based at?

Australia & haven't heard of junior shortages anywhere around the country, I would hazard a guess that this applies to most places that aren't this overinflated Mecca of programmers

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#85

Post by mbrameld »

mac01021 wrote: post #40
adjkant wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. If you're graduating without an internship or two, you're in trouble.

Define "trouble". I'm ten years into my career now, but I graduated with no internships and feel like I've done OK.

The job market for newly graduated programmers is a little different than it was 10 years ago. I'm 20 years into a development career, but I'm not going to pretend that what was true about the market when I entered it was true about it when you did.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#86

Post by bvod »

Graduating and going through the hiring process last year, I realized how true this is and how important your tech pedigree is. I recieved no full time offers before interning at Apple last summer, and after the internship I had no trouble getting offers (ended up with 5 full time offers). There wasn't any difference in how I described my interests before and after the summer internship, the only difference was companies wanted to see that I was vetted by a big name company. The real experience I had, working at a startup for three years before that yielded very little value in recruiting, even though the experience there made me a much better engineer and it was a successful startup that got acquired.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#87

Post by kenhwang »

CydeWeys wrote: post #63
kenhwang wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely agree with this. It's not that the junior developer position doesn't exist anymore, it's that there's an overwhelming supply of strong candidates with the CS pedigree, multiple internships, side projects, and well balanced technical/soft skills. For juniors to be cost effective/neutral, you can only really have 1-2 per mid/senior engineer. Most companies don't have that many mid/senior engineers to begin w…

> For juniors to be cost effective/neutral, you can only really have 1-2 per mid/senior engineer. Most companies don't have that many mid/senior engineers to begin with, much less ones that are willing to take on a junior to mentor for a year or two. I think you're off by the reciprocal of the ratio. It should be something like two experienced devs per junior dev. Any more junior devs than that and your senior devs a…

When I say cost neutral, I mean from a productivity standpoint. The 2x junior+senior accomplish the same amount of work as the senior would by themself.

It takes about a year for a junior+senior combo to be more productive than a senior alone. And another year before they're not a noticeable cost on the senior. 2x senior to a junior definitely brings the junior up to speed faster, but I think it's less efficient use of the seniors cause it also introduces a synchronization cost between the seniors.

I like to stagger the juniors so they're not at the same level; the +1 junior can take some part of the workload of mentoring the fresh junior. Plus it starts them on practicing mentoring early in their career. The fresh junior still has two mentors, and there's a clear pecking order.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#88

Post by quickthrower2 »

torbjorn wrote: post #52
mac01021 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "trouble". I'm ten years into my career now, but I graduated with no internships and feel like I've done OK.

I think he is referring to people entering the field now. If they don't have internships then it will be hard for them to compete with others vying for Junior Dev positions that have done internships.

Also applied when I started work in 2001. Having 3 months experience as an intern I think helped - making me appealing to smaller companies who needed someone to get stuck in rather than the big companies that spend the first 10 weeks in a training course. (Those companies were not doing well in 2001)

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#89

Post by ryhamz »

mac01021 wrote: post #40
adjkant wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. If you're graduating without an internship or two, you're in trouble.

Define "trouble". I'm ten years into my career now, but I graduated with no internships and feel like I've done OK.

You're already 10 years in. Completely different.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#90

Post by chrismcb »

AFNobody wrote: post #75
CydeWeys wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A key point that you're missing is that junior devs are likely to jump ship at least once in their career trajectory before they become senior devs. So yes, junior devs do need to be trained by someone , but if you're going to put in a lot of work and not receive much of the benefit, it's not in your best interest. There's a variety of reasons for why devs jump ship so often (including compensation), but unless you c…

Market rate compensation, non-toxic culture, and realistic expectations for work output solves 90% of the reasons reasonable people leave jobs. People claim all sorts of reasons for leaving jobs but its always one of those three or uncertainty about company longevity. (i.e. acquisition/financial difficulties for the company) The other 10% is people who are naive or have a family/relocation related issue that you can…

When I first got into programming, as a high school intern in the early eighties, I was told a programmer stays at a job, on average for the years. I haven't heard this number change at all. While I'm sure there are many jobs where people stay along time, the average length of stay is still fairly short. Boredom and wanting to work on something new is probably the biggest driver
Post reply on HN