True. But the team as a whole would probably still achieve much more if you were mostly guiding other (less experienced) devs.
I do. But I'm still faster than them in head to head coding throughput (code produced, error counts, etc). I've got decades of experience in developing software. No way someone fresh out of college is going to equal, let alone out-code me. That's not to say they're not good, but the assertion: > can code not only "just as fast", but probably faster too! is pure BS.
I am flabbergasted that you're senior and measure your productivity in "code produced". What is that, LOC? Can type faster than a recent graduate?
Good junior devs will be more skilled in some areas than you are. Maybe it's stuff you're not interested in; or just stuff they're really interested in. The only way a good junior dev doesn't "out-code" you, ever - is if you're only skilled in a very narrow niche (bonus points if only few people are interested in it, at all).
Junior devs absolutely can, and often do, build "wrong things" faster than senior devs. The measure of seniority is in my mind about knowing what to NOT build, in the first place.
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…
This is the exact same argument I made the last time we hired. If for another 20% I can get a more proven senior dev, that's the decision I will make every time.
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 misunde…
To be fair to the parent commenter, I think the short time horizons are based on how startups are funded. We get 12-18 months funding per round. Everything starts from that - planning, etc. If you work at a large enterprise, then interns have a different role - normally it's more like a long interview process. But for startups, I don't agree with it, but I understand why there is little mentoring.
300 $ / hour ? 300 * 8 * 5 * 20 -> 240K$ per month ? It seems far too much. This might be why they can't afford junior developer.
What's the "5" in your equation? :) However it's still way too much. 300 * 8 * 22 * 12 = 0.63M per year. In my opinion you must be at least Linus Torvalds's deputy to pretend on that.
Did she mean daily rate? I wonder if a junior ask for this rate, of course the company has no chance to afford a senior dev.
I can point to my well documented track record: code reviews, bonuses, promotions, code longevity, metrics, etc. as evidence. I can code multiple features in the time that a junior dev does one, even with me mentoring them. That doesn't mean they're bad, or even worse than average. It just means that after a career spent honing my craft, I'm much better than average.
I wasn't questioning your seniority. I pointed out how you decided to pick out a totally irrelevant, rhetorical sentence out of all points that OP made, and then decided to refute that, by claiming how much experience you have, and setting up yourself center stage, instead of adding value to the actual discussion topic at hand, which is the coaching gap.
I directly disputed the central thesis that OP (the person I was responding to, not the article) was putting forth, that senior developers shouldn't be coding:
> You don't hire senior devs to code - good junior devs can code not only "just as fast", but probably faster too!
> "Mentoring" is basically the job you hire a senior dev to do
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.
Are these just basic junior devs, or are they specialists in another field with multiple advanced degrees from top tier schools ($$$) and professional experience in that other field? (law, medicine, the arts) and (Yale, Princeton, Juilliard) If so, I'd say they are well worth $120,000, probably have a giant body of work in another field, and are motivated to make back their investment in a mountain of education that has led them over and over again to unemployment or low wage work. If not, my guess is that the math of buying so much schooling over so many years (even mid-tier) and then having to buy tuition at a coding school because the competition is so tight they have no time to waste teaching themselves just doesn't work out, especially when they have to pay $2000 a month in rent plus a 5 month security deposit in NYC, just to attend the "free", "scholarship-supported",or "tuition deferred" bootcamp, that is, if they are new to the city. If they are already New Yorkers, they are probably about to be evicted due to non-payment of same. No one is really talking openly about this with respect to this group of people; the affected must hide their ivy league scholarship homelessness at all costs if they want to ever get a job. It leads to a whole new breed of homeless: living as a homeless person/person-on-the-brink-of-homelessness, well educated, loans to pay, healthcare to pay because they aren't young anymore and really have to get root canals and cancer screenings, middle class props, lunches, and clothes to pay for so they can "pass" as middle class at interviews. It is not sustainable. This wave of unemployed people is exceptionally educated and professionally seasoned (in other fields) in a way that most in previous waves of new job seekers didn't have to be. And on top of all of this, they aren't good at the business of being poor-- they don't know how to get support because they were raised to behave like the middle class. Their families don't understand why they can't get jobs. I remember how little a junior dev had to know just 8 years ago in order to get work. The bootcamps aren't being honest about the lack of interest in bootcamp grads. The online programs aren't getting completed by students. Just a year ago on HN, very few would even recognize the lack of interest in junior devs. Now, we can't ignore it anymore. The tech ecosystem is unhealthy and dishonest with itself about its addictions to certain cultures and practices. It needs to take responsibility for educating newcomers (of all ages and backgrounds) because it is responsible for the fact that these highly skilled people are now useless in this increasingly tech-based society. Mentoring should be a natural part of prepping the soil. It should not matter if devs stay at the company that mentored them. The only reason this is a problem right now is because tech behaves like warring nations not like collaborating artists.
There were never any junior dev jobs. You have always had to lie, cheat, and steal your way into the field. I have a buddy who legit cheated his way to the top Magento certification and now cycles through $150k+ jobs where they keep him on long enough to realize he doesn't have any coding skills then they fire him. Reason is software is always an ancillary concern to the business. You see this in other fields, like s…
> 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…
When I was a jr I could not understand how other engineers, jr or especially sr, did not share this passion for helping and learning. Over the years (decades now) I came to accept that even in software development there are all these different types of people.
I learned to not get upset by it but still help/share, trying to inspire others and always learning more in this process.
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.
I've seen this attitude also, and it completely turned me off from interviewing bootcamp graduates. I'm sure there are great bootcamp people out there, but a 12 week course + a demo is basically an intern in my book.
There were never any junior dev jobs. You have always had to lie, cheat, and steal your way into the field. I have a buddy who legit cheated his way to the top Magento certification and now cycles through $150k+ jobs where they keep him on long enough to realize he doesn't have any coding skills then they fire him. Reason is software is always an ancillary concern to the business. You see this in other fields, like s…
My "standard" team typically has two jr engineers, and two Sr engineers. When we hire Sr engineers we hire people that like to mentor others and see it as part of being Sr. Jr engineers know that in order to become Sr one of the skills they need to master is mentoring. This is 100% a management issue, and it starts at the hiring filter. Hiring Jrs btw is its own skill as you are filtering for potential not skill or k…
I'll see your management issue and raise you a leadership one.
At my last job, a $40MM cosmetics and skincare company, the CEO had a great deal of trouble figuring out how to get his e-commerce department properly managed. I was willing to step up, and for a brief time they allowed me to bring in candidates for a position that would report to me, but I didn't have enough political cover over me so that fizzled out.
I cycled through 3 managers in 2 1/2 years at that job, 2 in the "Director of E-Commerce" role, and one in the "VP of E-Commerce" role. All three left for more sane roles.
It's hard to fix management problems at your company when leadership is so confused.