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Who Killed the Junior Developer?

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Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#411

Post by whb07 »

austenallred wrote: post #369
vkou wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All that said, we take it for granted that we’re in an industry where people go from cold start to 6 figure salaries in 3-6 months. I’ve not aware of that ever having happened in the history of the world. There have been plenty of trained or semi-trained labour shortages in the history of the world, with similar results.

Not sure any have been at this scale and lasted for this long.

There's multiple examples of this. Looking at Detroit's boom during post-war decade of American cars. In a bigger flash of the pan examples like the North Dakota oil fields. Where unskilled labor was in extreme demand to have 18 year olds making 6 figures.

This will always happen as long as the profits are there to sustain it. But I agree with your general sentiment, having said that, its just part of the human condition. When I attend a bitcoin/ethereum meetup most of the people there are only there for the lure of the quick buck. Not the long term technical implications/learn about the projects.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#412

Post by Klinky »

marrs wrote: post #354
zemanel wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High probability of “not productive effort”, i’m fighting my own rather serious battle with management at the moment. On further note, before i started the contract i was asked to bring my own laptop as work computer, i didn’t necessarily agree (for all the obvious reasons as security and business/personal risk) but he was being pushy about i said i could take my laptop (at least to get started) and i was expecting t…

I already got myself in boiling water by criticizing management in that the way projects and tasks were being managed was highly unprofessional... Communicating with managers is a bit of an art. I think a large part of what makes a developer "senior" is their ability to do this effectively. I'm not making any comments on your personal situation, but as a general rule it's important to talk in terms of solutions and n…

This doesn't work if you need help and resources to find solutions to said problems. You cannot solve everyone else's problems and implement solutions for them. You can suggest solutions, but someone has to give the okay and devote the time to implementation. If every problem you see requires you to submit a lengthy solutions proposal to the people who should be solving it themselves, you'll get burned out.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#413

Post by the-dude »

hetspookjee wrote: post #314
teddythetwig wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

I have a hard time believing that you will get in trouble for hiring interns and compensate them more than 500 euros. In the NL you aren't even obliged to give them any compensation and if you are compensating them you are free to do so as much as you'd wish. Internships in the Netherlands are akin to modern slavery imo. You work full time and with luck you get a compensation of 500 euros a month,though often no comp…

> I have a hard time believing that you will get in trouble for hiring interns and compensate them more than 500 euros.

Student visas?

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#414

Post by jerf »

A hypothesis for part of the problem that I've scrolled through most of this conversation and still not seen: Junior developers are having a hard time finding a job because the tasks have gotten harder. As easy as people may claim "cloud" is, if a junior developer has to learn the three Javascript libraries, two backend languages, a devops cloud deployment system, and three monitoring technologies just to be able to break even on productivity, it's going to be hard to justify hiring a "junior dev".

When I got into web dev in 1997, we didn't even have source control to speak of. We barely used Javascript. All I needed was a template language and same basic HTML, and we put out a project that, at the time, was considered amazingly cutting edge by most people who used it.

If I were to try to hire me of 1997 now, I'd have a lot harder time finding something for him to do, because I'd have half-a-dozen technologies to train him on before he could even produce the equivalent of "hello world" that integrates correctly into a modern environment. All of these techs have reasons to exist. We found out about the server going down when people got frustrated about it being down and called us after hours of outage. We found out that something was eating 100% of the CPU the same way. Our "analytics" were mostly "Hmmm, nobody seems to be complaining, everything must be OK!" Automated testing? Literally never heard of it. And so on and so on. But people are not magically infused with this knowledge in college; in fact the curricula have barely changed since then (which I consider mostly a good thing), so it means that the bar to being a productive junior dev has definitely risen.

Fortunately, my team lately has been able to diversify and we've got some more projects that are independent from the legacy code base I maintain, so as we've been looking at headcount this year I've been able to say that we've got some positions for juniors now, who can work in a space that is more lake-like than sea-like, and be productive, and learn things, and develop. But last year I had to say that I've got nothing that wouldn't take at least a medium-skill dev to get anywhere in any reasonable period of time.

(And let me both open and close on the word part. I don't think this is the entire problem, and I agree with a lot of what other people said about other parts. But I believe it may be a quite non-trivial part of it.)

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#415

Post by brooklyn_ashey »

diiaann wrote: post #193
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…

I liken the bootcamp business to the mortgage lending business before the subprime crisis. In the beginning, there were plenty of candidates that were suited for careers in software engineering. Now we are at the point where each school has fewer great candidates so they market to a bigger audience.

They have fewer great candidates (if that is even true) because the hip candidates are looking for the ladder somewhere else-- they can now see they will never get hired based on skill alone, however well developed for a beginner.(and if they had golden personal connections to add to it, they were in the first wave and/or would not be desperate for work) They all have ambitious, skilled, motivated friends who recently spent money on these bootcamps and who didn't get work that was any better than the work they took the course to get out of in the first place. Many can't find work at all. This is getting out there now, from student to student. There is now enough of a din to finally hear above the denials. But I agree, the bootcamps need to demand more of themselves so they don't end up all being hucksters to the few people who are so far away from tech in their lives, they have not yet heard that the ladder has been pulled up long ago. I hope they can learn how to innovate on a grand scale.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#416

Post by snarf21 »

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…

I agree with you and this is the thing that gets lost on both sides. How fast you type and how many lines of code you write and test per day aren't the right metrics. It is about adding value, it isn't an assembly line. There is a major problem with middle/upper management understanding this. However, there is also a large group of people who view themselves as top developers who talk about having too many distractions and wanting a private office so they can lay down a lot of code each day. I'm not saying that isn't how some might be able to add the most value but code/day doesn't guarantee that maximum. Mentoring team members, documenting architecture, building automated tests, talking to customers, etc. will very likely yield more value in everything but the very near term.

All this to say that we need to be careful that we don't point the finger too hard at management and miss our own failings. Software done well is incredibly hard and increasingly complex. Focusing on adding value and not on code/day can help us all stay focused on the real goal and what is best for us and the company and the customers.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#417

Post by kbwt »

nkrisc wrote: post #327
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…

As a non-developer who works directly with devs, I've always thought this: I've heard that being a dev is 90% thinking about code and 10% writing it. In my experience you hire senior devs to do the thinking part and junior devs to do the writing part while learning how to do the thinking part.

The communication ends up being such a bottleneck that your senior devs might as well do the 10% writing. Incidentally also the reason why outsourcing software doesn't work if you're trying to do anything innovative.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#418

Post by matwood »

Cd00d wrote: post #155
preordained wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you on almost everything...I love tinkering, hacking, reading, pondering, side "experiments" (I think "project" is a bit grandiose for what I hack on from time to time)...but holy hell do I hate conferences and things like that. I just don't get it...most every conference I've seen could have been summed up in a quick article or powerpoint...and I don't get any personal thrills from the "live experience". That…

I'm from another field, but I love love love conferences. It's like an annual reunion of my peers, days of detailed talks and better questions, and vast amounts of network chat that I find interesting and valuable. I see a lot of anti-conference comments here on HN, and I don't get it. Every week I've spent at a conference has been highly illuminating and motivating, and recharged my fascination. This is all followed…

> 3-5 days in a new city seems like a huge win with the professional benefits. What am I missing?

I'm the tech presence at many of my companies industry conferences. The city the conference is in makes no difference because I'm there to meet people and schedule accordingly. Current customers, potential customers, tech people from partners and even competitors are all very valuable interactions.

For me, conferences have turned into a cost effective place to meet in person all of the people I deal with remotely.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#419

Post by padobson »

dragonwriter wrote: post #401
padobson wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that you pointed out the need for political strength within organizations. I agree, and I think it directly conflicts with this line from the post: Yeah, I’m gonna bring gender into it, because I’m a woman and when women take on roles like this they often get pigeonholed into “den mother” stereotypes. That means less prestige and less prestige usually means less pay. Having the admiration and respect of the ne…

> Having the admiration and respect of the next generation of developers at your company offers far more leverage than the nebulous prestige “Prestige” and “respect” are essentially synonyms, and careerwise respect of developers in the org often is not as important as respect of management. > What could provide more organizational political power than building a hierarchy of capable engineers that consistently come t…

> Being perceived by management as delivering results rather than being the one behind the scenes enabling others to be perceived that way.

This is essentially a synonym of the sentence you quoted

> careerwise respect of developers in the org often is not as important as respect of management

You're missing the point. By mentoring developers you become de facto management; it's willful, benevolent career advancement.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#420

Post by toastercat »

jarjoura wrote: post #7

Most junior level positions are being filled with the massive influx of new grads from really strong intern programs at most companies now. If you're in college now, make sure you get an internship at a company in your field. If it's too late for that, then you'll have to do a little extra work and probably work on a couple side projects and post them on GitHub. That first job will always be the hardest to get, so do…

I remember being a Sophomore in college 5 years ago, and it was hard even finding an internship. My first internship was unpaid because it was the only one that actually called me back.

It's funny how many business cards I picked up from recruiters during career fairs, only to have none of them return my calls or emails.

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