111–120 of 803 posts
Do you really want project managers who couldn't cut it as a developer?
I'm assuming we are talking about software projects here. If so, the idea of putting someone who couldn't make the grade on the bottom rung in charge of the whole enterprise seems like a bad idea.
Seniors are valued because they can write great code, think long-term solutions, take on a project and see all the details to completion, have a more predictable development cycle, and yes, train Juniors.
So my point is... if you graduate too many too fast, you'll end up with people who you can't train, and who also think that working for "the man" a.k.a. big companies is bad, so the perfect combination of limited use, expensive, and unwilling to work in places where they can experiment.
I love mentoring. I always have. I used to help out other kids in my high school programming classes. Despite holding several high-level software development positions, what is the total number of times I've been asked by management to mentor more junior folks? Zero. I did it because I love sharing knowledge and I like seeing looks of understanding appear on my colleagues' faces when they "get something" for the firs…
There's usually code reviews in which they can pick up on a lot, a mountain of resources online, and there's nothing stopping them from asking for help/opinions from fellow co-workers when tackling a problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a bit of a chicken or the egg problem. Why stay at a company that doesn't invest in you?
Most developers doing the one year stint thing don't care about anything other than salary. No matter what you do for them they will jump after a year. Seeing that pattern on a resume a big warning sign. These people are simply mercenary and deserve to be treated as such.
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…
Once they're trained up to a point where another company is willing to pay them more for a more senior position, you could give them a raise? Congrats! You trained a junior dev and they turned into a senior dev.
I teach at a Bootcamp and see a lot junior developers looking for jobs. Many of them complain of it being hard to find jobs and it is. But I don’t think it is any harder than say 10 years ago when I got started. The main the problem is they’ve never interviewed for a technical position before or aren’t looking in the right places for jobs. Also a lot of jobs are perfectly suited for juniors but it doesn’t reflect tha…
Searching for a job is way easier if you have a professional network to draw on and beginners, pretty much by definition, really don't.
Most of my friends have the job they have because of a combination of Twitter and attending conferences on discounted student tickets.
As a near-Junior level developer myself sitting at two years of experience I've found myself wondering the same thing. I've put out my resume across the country and found few companies willing to look at it and even fewer positions. Most are looking for mid-tier to senior developers. Even worse I've kept in touch with friends who despite having far more internship experience than I ended up having quite a bit of diff…
I’m only mostly joking.
Senior devs have expectations around salary, growth and work. Over time when the company starts running out of steam - funding, growth or even interesting work it gets difficult to keep the senior devs happy.
Once that scenario plays out, companies start scrambling to find interns or junior devs and find out, not many are not interested in working for them because they heard "rumors" about company's hard-ass culture on "not learning on the job".
Slowly, company realize that a team made of only senior devs is too costly for the value they provide. And company starts to cut down, put in hiring freeze telling the senior devs to produce more per person. Some even go to the extent of firing some seniors and getting junior devs and then allowing people to learn on the job.
Smaller companies had less relative incentive. By the time someone is good, you might be flipping the company, or bankrupt. (This isn't to say it's not worth doing, just less incented)
This shift was one of the largest differences I had to adjust to going from large to small. (It isn't just that mentoring isn't rewarded, it's that there are short term disincentives - the benefits from mentoring likely come in the next company, or the one after that)
What's this mean? Just that the burden is on the mentee.