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

291–300 of 803 posts

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#291

Post by cimmanom »

Companies have woken up to the fact that for the most part people no longer stay in one job for more than a few years.

Training junior people makes sense economically only if they get up to speed and positive productivity within a small fraction of the time they'll be with your company.

Since a bad developer creates enormous negative productivity, it can be years before a new programmer's contributions are productive at all, let alone greater than the ongoing opportunity cost of the time spent mentoring them, let alone the sunk cost of months to years of mentorship.

This time makes sense only to invest if you expect the developer you trained to stay with you for many years. That expectation has become less and less rational over the past couple decades.

Nowadays if you take on and train a junior, you're taking the loss on that training - not to train someone who's going to be a good mid-level developer in your own company, but who's going to jump ship for somewhere else well before you can make back the senior developer time spent on them.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#292

Post by mkohlmyr »

watwut wrote: post #135
whiskyant wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think dedicated mentorship is required for junior devs. 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.

Code review is horrible way to teach. Especially with reviewers common in tech who just can't tell difference between differences of opinion and crappy code. Or difference between "how I would did it" and bad code.

What you said is basically a tautology. "This method of mentoring won't work if you have bad mentors".

The person you're describing shouldn't be mentoring. The problem isn't the methodology, but their personality being poorly suited to the task at hand.

This industry frequently conflates effective producers of lines of code, with an ability to function in a senior role. If you look at other lines of work, seniority often implies things beyond "does the basic job quickly".

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#293

Post by virgilp »

dalbasal wrote: post #269
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…

> You hire for needs in the next 12 months.

That's like, your opinion, man. Why can't you hire long-term? If all you plan for is short-term, it will only work short-term, and it should be no surprise if on the longer term you fail or you find yourself in a world of pain.

> I see this as a byproduct of product development time. MVP and its associated stuff... It's all about short horizons,

I think you severely misunderstand MVP... it's not at all about short horizons, on the contrary. It's about doing the right thing in the longer term. To put "MVP" in a hiring context - the right "MVP" attitude is to hire temporarily to see whether the person is right for the job - and once you determine you've got a good fit, invest massively in that person to make sure you've got a long-term employee (don't just skim him/her for short-term profit, but invest to build a long-lasting relationship).

> Entire companies are built around 3-6 year horizons from cenception to exit.

I've yet to see that work (and not in the sense that "lottery works" - nobody seriously suggests buying lots of lottery tickets if you want to get rich.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#294

Post by mwdalrymple »

soheil wrote: post #159
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…

You're missing a rather obvious point. A junior dev after months of training could jump ship for much better comp now that they're less junior or that suddenly some other company's product interests them more. Another point missing is that sometimes there are very hard problems (eg. self-driving cars, fusion power, DNA pattern matching) that need solving quickly and that's what some companies try to do, there are oth…

I disagree with that statement. I find that a junior dev is far less jaded by the work world and will often develop a loyalty and dedicate to the team (if it is a good environment) that a sr. Dev wouldn't. Once your are 5 to 10 years into your career how you view your work/life balance and professional relationships changes dramatically.

A junior dev will often stay with an organization much much longer than what is probably good for them, especially if they are actively mentored and engaged.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#295

Post by friendzis »

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…

Actually, the cost of mentoring is not necessarily only cost of lost productivity. Sometimes (I hope, more likely mostly) there are pieces of old, arcane, barely and wrongly documented pieces of codebase that there is exactly one senior in the company who knows how it works. Assigning said senior from coding literally means pushing deadlines. So it is kind of tragedy of the commons.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#296

Post by swiley »

friendzis wrote: post #295
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…

Actually, the cost of mentoring is not necessarily only cost of lost productivity. Sometimes (I hope, more likely mostly) there are pieces of old, arcane, barely and wrongly documented pieces of codebase that there is exactly one senior in the company who knows how it works. Assigning said senior from coding literally means pushing deadlines. So it is kind of tragedy of the commons.

One of the good reasons to have junior devs around is that (if they're motivated) they'll find holes in the documentation and help prevent this. I usually write many pages of text to document problems and unwritten ideas at my internships.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#297

Post by emodendroket »

commandertso wrote: post #106
emodendroket wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I think a lot of what you are paying for with the boot camp is the promise that their network and industry contacts will help you. Otherwise it's pretty much impossible (at least in my view) to justify those tuition rates.

Having gone through a bootcamp, I can also say there's the "we know what we're getting," factor. The job I got hired into afterwards, they knew I would be competent to a certain degree because they'd already hired out of that bootcamp before, and the bootcamp had pretty strict standards about who made it to Career Day. That was a definite factor in my getting hired. Not to say this would or wouldn't justify various t…

Well, right, that ties in with the rest of it. It's like having someone to vouch for you to help get your foot in the door.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#298

Post by bkovacev »

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…

We've recently started hiring for a junior front-end position and we've stumbled upon code bootcamps graduates asking for 120k with one or two demo projects on their github. NYC Area, which I find absurd.

Unsure if it's the mentors at those schools that are telling their students to ask for that much or the students themselves think that companies that want to hire juniors usually have that deep of a pocket.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#299

Post by tonyedgecombe »

emodendroket wrote: post #279
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Yeah. In particular, it's often your looser acquaintances who have something for you.

Indeed, one of my bigger customers now was in a junior role at a company I did some work for years ago. You never really know where opportunities might lie and it costs little to keep in touch.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#300

Post by cimmanom »

amriksohata wrote: post #192

Got a side question.. how do I tell my junior developer who's still junior that he's not ready for being promoted. He feels he is because he understands more of the code base now, he often makes a lot of mistakes and is ready to point out the mistakes of others. He also does not get off his desk to communicate or question requirements.

Find or create a skills matrix for developer seniority. There are a few floating around out there if you Google.
Post reply on HN