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Who Killed the Junior Developer?

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Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#281

Post by dozzie »

crdoconnor wrote: post #241
jfasi wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ref…

No. Leaving landmines like an easily avoidable linear search in a loop is an antipattern.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#282

Post by z92 »

TeeWEE wrote: post #243

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 so…

You don't hire junior devs then.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#284

Post by JepZ »

godot wrote: post #152
nathanaldensr wrote: post #6

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…

I feel like the current trend of agile development process common in startups now somewhat works against senior devs' interests to mentor junior devs. There simply isn't time allocated for this. Senior devs are held accountable for what they deliver, and doing so on time. This is among other things like code reviewing PRs and attending meetings. For most senior devs working under this circumstance, the best they coul…

I doubt that agile is the problem here. I've seen organizations which weren't even agile having the exact same problem, not just for devs. It's pretty much the same with manager/project manager positions.

I think a much better explanation is outsourcing. A company which does a lot of outsourcing only needs a few people managing the partners. Managing an outsourcing partner is next to impossible for a junior as they lack the crucial experience. So they try to focus an experienced personnel. I don't know if that is the way outsourcing is supposed to be done, but at least its the way I have experienced it.

There might be other reasons for this senior-only sickness, but I am pretty sure pointing at agile is the wrong direction. If you are unhappy with the 'agile schedule', maybe its time for

> Responding to change over following a plan

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#286

Post by Terr_ »

Declanomous wrote: post #158
Terr_ wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true but it also misses the point: A portion of the limited money-pool you could have used for their raise is already gone, spend in the extra costs (direct or opportunity) of the training period. There isn't much of a "raw mercenary economics" argument for training (which the MBA types prefer), you've got to talk about intangibles like loyalty, goodwill, social connections, etc.

That doesn't make sense to me. Let's say you train someone whose salary is [x]. After training, their market salary would be 30% higher; [1.3x]. Are you suggesting that if they end up with a hypothetical 10% raise, to [1.1x] because [.2x] was spent on training? That's absurd. You can't just walk out on the street and hire a person who is already trained for [1.3x]. You have to devote resources to the hiring process,…

> Are you suggesting that if they end up with a hypothetical 10% raise, to [1.1x] because [.2x] was spent on training?

Either that, or the company makes cuts somewhere else which -- all else being equal -- puts it at a competitive disadvantage. Budgets are generally zero-sum at a particular moment in time.

> You have to devote resources to the hiring process, which are probably nearly as expensive as training up a junior dev, all things considered.

If you can prove that to the bean-counters, by all means spread the good word.

However even if true you must consider a third potential outcome: You train up the junior employee, and then they don't stay with your market-rate offer for whatever reason, and you have to incur the hiring-process costs anyway for the empty senior position.

That scenario is always be more expensive than the other two, and it can only strike junior-trainer companies. Senior-poacher companies don't have to even worry about the odds of it occurring.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#287

Post by lotsofpulp »

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?

Depends what caliber person you want. Highly educated, motivated, top 10%, maybe even 20% should be able to earn almost $100k upon earning a Masters, maybe even engineering/science degree. In the bigger cities in the US, I would expect most technical/finance/medical professionals to be making six figures easily by the time they are mid to upper 20s.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#288

Post by teddythetwig »

zemanel wrote: post #248
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…

Just want to point out that often the interns will receive additional compensation from their programs. When we hire interns from Erasmus+, they are given 500 euro from us, as well as 500 euro from their program. Additionally, Erasmus students are eligible for student housing from UvA or the VU. Finally, because they are in a special class, as interns, here in NL, we can actually get in trouble with the government for paying them more than 500 euro. It sounds to me like your management team isn't giving them the resources they need to survive in the city, but know that they are there. We have taken on four interns over the past two years, and after their internships placed them at large companies like Trivago and Elsevier, hired one on fulltime, and are working with the last to land a job in his preffered location. With the proper mentorship, it can be a great deal for students! If you are looking for a company where you are expected to mentor the junior devs and interns, send me a DM and we can see if you would be a good fit :)

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#289

Post by mwdalrymple »

godot wrote: post #152
nathanaldensr wrote: post #6

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…

I feel like the current trend of agile development process common in startups now somewhat works against senior devs' interests to mentor junior devs. There simply isn't time allocated for this. Senior devs are held accountable for what they deliver, and doing so on time. This is among other things like code reviewing PRs and attending meetings. For most senior devs working under this circumstance, the best they coul…

I agree with what you are saying in that it needs to be called out that time needs to be specifically set aside in agile / sprint planning for mentoring. My manager understood this and I was allocated at least a day sprint to just 'mentor' my junior dev through a 8 months rotational stint in the team. Mentorship is very rewarding and I found out that I got just as much out of the relationship as they did. It also helped that for the first 4 weeks I was allowed to run her through a self lead learning program that I designed for them. Giving a new hire out of univiristy time to learn enough of what they needed to tackle some high value work just made the final outcome so much more successful.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#290

Post by mwdalrymple »

rjsw wrote: post #268
zackya89 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would consider soliciting a formal mentor here on hackernews. Hacking on a open source project together would be a way to recieve that help in a remote fashion.

Sounds like there should be a thread to match mentors and mentees here on hackernews. Maybe a bunch of mentors post some open source projects that they want mentees for?

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