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Who Killed the Junior Developer?

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Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#241

Post by crdoconnor »

jfasi wrote: post #176
mgenglder wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about what the common deficiencies that your encountering are. Do you mean lack of knowledge and testing and more applicable skills?

Unfortunately I can't share the exact questions we ask, but here's a smattering of the sorts of pitfalls I encounter, in no particular order: * Number one is probably no Big-O performance considerations, or Big-O is an afterthought. For the love of God, please please please don't do a linear search on an unsorted array anywhere inside a nested loop. If you're going to do any appreciable number of lookups, preprocess…

>Number one is probably no Big-O performance considerations, or Big-O is an afterthought. For the love of God, please please please don't do a linear search on an unsorted array anywhere inside a nested loop. If you're going to do any appreciable number of lookups, preprocess your data into a hashmap, hashset, whatever.

Big O should be an afterthought - the MO of any developer ought to be to get it right and then refactor - and worry about speed after profiling. Premature optimization is an antipattern you should be selecting against, not for.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#242

Post by z3t4 »

Companies want to hire junior developers because they can pay them half of what they pay senior developers. But they also want the junior developers to have the same experience ...

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#243

Post by TeeWEE »

What is a junior developer? Is a junior developer somebody without experience but with a good technical background. We hire those for sure.

But we dont hire people who dont have a solid basis, and just know a little bit of javascript programming.

For computer programming in a serious field, you need to know the basis to be good one, to solve real problems.

We actually dont use the name "Junior" developer. You're a software engineer or you're not. Junior developers are often names for people who can't program. We don't hire them.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#245

Post by tejasmanohar »

maxxxxx wrote: post #32
CryoLogic wrote: post #17

The growth of undergrand CS program enrollment is pretty insane, same with bootcamps. Lots of these people have no real interest in the positions outside of pay, which is fine for most careers. But in tech we put a lot of value on self learning and interest. I've definitely seen the number of new grad applicants and bootcamp grad applicants at least quadruple in the past few years. Most of these can make an Angular a…

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 didn't work in the 90s, but I'm with you here. I joined the industry out of interest. I didn't know a thing about pay when I started programming. As demand for developers increases and the industry becomes "mainstream", it's inevitable that we'll attract more folks who are purely in it for the high-paying job and "secure lifestyle".

The job of a school teacher is to teach, but your job at a startup is to empower the company to succeed. Part of this is helping the team succeed, but a big part of this is prioritization. There's nothing wrong with prioritizing your resources on someone who is more motivated and has more growth potential by their own choice. After all, if you don't put your all into something, you can't expect others to put their all into you.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#246

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #194
emodendroket wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> a professional network How? Let's say I work at some company...Then I know exactly my coworkers and customers. How does that help me build a network? I could maybe ring up some buddys from uni that are working somewhere else... But contact to them also gets lost over time.

>But contact to them also gets lost over time

That's probably a mistake on your part, especially when tools like LinkedIn make it so easy.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#247

Post by opportune »

derrekl wrote: post #122

The problem is squashed salaries. I’ll have junior devs or people straight out of code school asking for 75-80% the salary of a solid senior dev. If I have to make a bet on who will be easier to manage and get productive 4 seniors vs 5 juniors for the same total expenditure I’ll choose the seniors every time. Even at 2 to 1 I’m taking seniors. Maybe around 3 or 4 to 1 juniors might look better. But that means junior…

I've noticed this too. There are only a few rational explanations

1. Senior devs aren't paid enough for the value they bring to the company (or conversely, junior devs are paid too much for that value)

2. Investing in junior devs gives a good enough ROI that it's worth overpaying them for a few years. That is, after e.g. three years, enough junior devs have stuck around that they've accumulated enough org-specific knowledge and general tech competency to justify their initially high salaries

3. Senior devs aren't actually that much more productive than junior devs, they just think they are. They also may be averse to doing productive-but-boring work that feels "beneath" them.

4. New devs are valued for more than just their direct contributions to the software project's code base. For example, they may be valued for their ability to bring fresh perspectives, or for their proximity to formal education and thus their tendency to be knowledgable of relatively cutting-edge tech. I think universities lag behind the vanguard trendsetters by at least 5 years, but there are certainly software companies that are stuck 20 or more years in the past

5. The job market for developers is irrational with respect to experience and reasoning about it is as worthwhile as reasoning about the true value of Bitcoin.

I think it's a mixture between 1 and 2, with a little bit of each other explanation too. Worth noting is that senior developers at the big tech companies (AmaGooFaceAppleSoft) get paid a lot more than senior devs at most other tech companies, but most of that compensation is in stock. Full monetary comp (not counting benefits and perks) for a fresh grad might be about $150k/year, but senior developers with >5 years experience are making closer to $250k/year or more

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#248

Post by zemanel »

virgilp wrote: post #223

> we don’t hire junior developers because we can’t afford to have our senior developers mentor them. That feels too dumb to be real (which is exactly why it's probably a real thing). You don't hire senior devs to code - good junior devs can code not only "just as fast", but probably faster too! You hire senior devs to guide you WHAT and HOW to code. And they can do that so much more effectively if they don't have to…

In my current job, for a tech company with less than 12 people, at least 5 are interns. Two of them were recent hires (January) and before they were onboarded, i had a meeting with my boss and the other senior developer regarding the new interns and my boss stated he didn’t want me and other senior dev spending too much time mentoring the interns and that if they couldn’t manage by themselves, he would just let them go (one is software dev intern, relocated from Lithuania).

As far as i know, management provided zero training (online courses, conferences, books etc) and the dev intern is receiving 500€/month for 40h work week, which around Amsterdam/Netherlands hardly covers housing expenses in shared accommodation, even though the intern is soon expecting Erasmus support, which will alleviate his situation apparently.

Needless to say i find the situation rather vile independently if it’s a common practice or even if non-paid internships are common.

Recently i took the dev intern out for dinner and beers, gave him a few tips on how to improve himself to be ready for a decent job (online courses, writing blog posts etc) and told him he could repay me by paying forward to an intern at his next proper jobs.

As a note, another intern (part time) is also working on his maybe 5 years old laptop that apparently crashes a lot and can hardly run something like Pycharm.

I’m looking for another job :-)

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#250

Post by skjerns »

derrekl wrote: post #122

The problem is squashed salaries. I’ll have junior devs or people straight out of code school asking for 75-80% the salary of a solid senior dev. If I have to make a bet on who will be easier to manage and get productive 4 seniors vs 5 juniors for the same total expenditure I’ll choose the seniors every time. Even at 2 to 1 I’m taking seniors. Maybe around 3 or 4 to 1 juniors might look better. But that means junior…

is 50k really such a bad starting salary or is there such a big difference between US and EU?
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