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Who Killed the Junior Developer?

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Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#261

Post by loorinm »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #252
loorinm wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it expensive to solve the bullpen issue? Tell people to STFU or build a wall in the office, or at least put up some dividers. It’s not rocket science. Most CEOs and VPs are idiots, handing money around to each other in a circle jerk of old white guys club, backslapping each other for hiring each other and keeping the hegemony going. These idiots do not know what they are doing, they have just been conditioned…

I tried, and nearly got fired for this. Well, not fired , but I'm currently a contractor, and was told because of this that I may not become an actual hire. (This has since settled down, but I'm still not hired because of unrelated issues —they're still waiting for a government grant.) The story is simple: we have a prefab building with 3 stories, a beautiful interior, 52 desks on each floor. All open, but for 2 clos…

I honestly don’t know why so many companies are clinging to open offices with a death grip. Who does this benefit???

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#262

Post by loup-vaillant »

skjerns wrote: post #250
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?

There are 2 differences: first, US devs are paid substantially more. Second, their stated salaries is closer to what their employer spends than our salaries. Our employers pay various taxes before giving us our stated salary, they have private insurances. This is a gross oversimplification, but that's the idea. Third, the cost of living is often higher in the US.

To really compare salaries, you need to count what the employer actually pays, and factor in the various costs of living (taxes, insurance, home, food, transportation…).

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#263

Post by alkonaut »

Is this because people stay for just short timespans? We hire junior devs but we don’t expect much for the first years. I’m 15 years in and in a team of 30, the average is probably 10 years.

It takes a year to just “onboard” someone until they don’t need a lot of mentoring, but until a junior dev isn’t just a dangerous mess-creating junior dev, takes at least a couple of years more.

Learning the domain takes many years too, and without knowing the domain you need to be micromanaged and have everything specced up front or need constant interrupting feedback from product owners (should this be default on? What order should this be sorted? How many frobs will the typical user enter here? etc).

Obviously you can’t stop people from leaving but I wouldn’t even hire someone unless I genuinely believed they are going to stay 5 years.

(For context, this is heavy technical desktop software in a very mechanical engineering-heavy domain)

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#264

Post by jjkk0101 »

expertentipp wrote: post #257
zemanel wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

He is being paid with generous social security net (for which he doesn’t necessarily qualify) and with the priviledge of living in developed country with extensive infrastructure... /s

I understand your sarcasm, but what is sad some people actually think this way.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#265

Post by loup-vaillant »

loorinm wrote: post #261
loup-vaillant wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried, and nearly got fired for this. Well, not fired , but I'm currently a contractor, and was told because of this that I may not become an actual hire. (This has since settled down, but I'm still not hired because of unrelated issues —they're still waiting for a government grant.) The story is simple: we have a prefab building with 3 stories, a beautiful interior, 52 desks on each floor. All open, but for 2 clos…

I honestly don’t know why so many companies are clinging to open offices with a death grip. Who does this benefit???

Accounting. Open offices take less space, which is cheaper. The real costs are hidden, so they tend to be ignored.

It also looks good from the outside.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#266

Post by alkonaut »

pan69 wrote: post #57

My personal experience with this is that the ratio matters A LOT. I.e. having juniors out number the seniors is bad. When you have a team that mostly consist of junior and mid-level developers, then they will clique together and they will mostly likely "behave" like juniors. Typical junior behaviour is e.g. to rather than digging into the backlog for the next thing to work on when you're done with one thing, to just…

This is insightful. A senior dev shouldn’t be a “manager” for a group of juniors. It should be the norm.

The mistake I think is seeing junior/senior devs as a management hierarchy (in which you normally have a more senior person manage more than one junior staff member).

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#267

Post by methodover »

pan69 wrote: post #57

My personal experience with this is that the ratio matters A LOT. I.e. having juniors out number the seniors is bad. When you have a team that mostly consist of junior and mid-level developers, then they will clique together and they will mostly likely "behave" like juniors. Typical junior behaviour is e.g. to rather than digging into the backlog for the next thing to work on when you're done with one thing, to just…

I've had the opposite problem with juniors in the past -- rush to solve tickets and get them committed, but the work done is awful. I honestly preferred the lazy juniors on the team. At least they were doing poor work but there was less of it to code review and fix.

I used to be on the pro junior side of things... but when you're on the earlier side of a startup (series a/b), juniors are a huge liability.

Best "junior" hire I made was recruiting someone in support who I thought was smart and conscientious. Turned him on to programming, mentored him, and now he's great.

I have no idea what the lesson from this has been. hiring is hard.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#268

Post by rjsw »

zackya89 wrote: post #221
cturner wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you hire a junior developer, they are themselves a project. How else could it be? The need for mentoring is what makes them a junior. If they didn't need mentoring, they would not be a junior. Code reviews are a reactive exercise. They allow people of influence to criticise work. But it is important that people of influence have first stepped up, and laid out a clear direction. As the mentor, you should have a m…

Im hired as junior dev. at a relatively large non-tech company, to provide them with software tools, I built all these tools by myself with no mentoring and no help, My fear is this, my code looks clunky (probably not written according to good software design ?), and hard to read for others, I also have no skills in collaboration, how would I be able to grow these skills without a mentor ?.

You sound as if you are already able to teach yourself, just read more open-source code to find out what is good or bad style.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#269

Post by dalbasal »

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…

The problem I've seen with mentoring, in practice, is the 1 in 3 juniors that takes up all the time. Maybe the particular job doesn't suit them. Maybe they shouldn't be a dev. Maybe it's personality.

Some managers, mentors or such seem to deal with this well. But, in the cases that I've seen having an employee that is not producing value is stressful and time consuming. Largely, it's driven by empathy. You don't want them to get fired, or embarrassed.

Anyway, the person taking up most mentoring time (including:'leave this part, I'll fix it) is also producing the least of the least important stuff. The best juniors can be left to their devices and everything is ok, but basically the time and effort allocation becomes very inefficient.

Mentoring is important, but I disagree with you somewhat. Software is just an ADD industry. Everything is fast. You hire for needs in the next 12 months. Junior devs (all devs, some places) average short stints.

Anyway, mentiring, training and such are long term investments. Makes less sense in industry segments that think in shorter horizons and treat everything from office space to employees or even products as 1-2 year solutions. Entire companies are built around 3-6 year horizons from cenception to exit.

I see this as a byproduct of product development time. MVP and its associated stuff... It's all about short horizons, clean slates and short term planning. Nothing is free and the cost of this is anything that's part of long term strategy, like hiring and training for long term benefit.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#270

Post by thepratt »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #238
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…

Sounds like senior devs who can't even do teamwork. At my job I'm a junior and guess what I can ask a senior for help cause if my job fails they also fail because oh guess what? Its a team and we are all on the same boat and wait it gets better! I end up spending my own time helping out senior developers in places they get stuck! (Inconceivable!) Yeah sounds like a management team and a bunch of senior devs who have…

Completely agree, it should always be team first.
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