This piece reminded me of my days in the restaurant business as a teenager. Was common for everyone to do a tour there, but now the jobs are mostly done by the “undocumented.” Don’t care to discuss the politics of that but it feels similar.
Who Killed the Junior Developer?
481–490 of 803 posts
Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?
#482There 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…
> accountants leave school fully capable of employment Well, fully capable of entry-level employment. Anyone who graduates from a reputable school with a Comp. Sci. or InfoSys type of major is also fully capable of entry-level employment. Accountants aren't really capable of anything but grunt work until they pass the CPA which normally is after several years of grunt work and additional learning and study. Programme…
> Anyone who graduates from a reputable school with a Comp. Sci. or InfoSys type of major is also fully capable of entry-level employment.
No, they're really not, for at least a year. It takes at least that long for most new graduates to get over the hump and learn enough of the practical skills and industry practices that their university left them woefully ignorant of, so that they can start being marginally useful. Once in a while you find somebody who has been doing real work on the side for years during or before college, and thus has a clue how things work, but that's a diamond in the rough, usually.
And unfortunately, many of them just can't hack being a professional programmer, and they never get to the point where they become a net positive, in which case you just hope they leave of their own volition or you can silo them off in some area of little importance that won't cause you problems down the road.
Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 po…
> 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? Who uses LOC? I'm talking about completed, tested, accepted features, as defined by our project teams. > Good junior devs will be more skilled in some areas than you are. Well, yeah...of course. I'm not comparing myself to someone who works in an entirely different field…
> I'm talking about completed, tested, accepted features, as defined by our project teams.
Still rather strange metrics for productivity in a senior engineer. This is more what I'm taking about: https://zef.me/the-100x-engineer-6d50a690a866
If you're really senior, you shouldn't be working on the kind of features that get delivered at a rate of "5 per sprint". More like on stuff that gets delivered once every year. The junior SHOULD outperform you in "code produced" - they just shouldn't outperform you in dollars produced (or saved).
Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?
#484I 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…
You are supposed to modify and fit Agile into your specific process, not follow it dogmatically. It's literally the first thing on the manifesto: "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools". Change the process, or change the culture around this instead of blaming a broken process.
To add an example: At this company they have the concept of an IP (Innovation and Planning) sprint. This means that one sprint out of 5 we take to fix technical debt, add instrumentation, verify documentation. You should have some time carved out for mentoring.
At the very least, don't count the juniors in your capacity. This way you'll be able to handle their pace while keeping your velocity.
Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?
#485I'm lucky to work where I do. We have the best system I've seen for growing junior developers. Our team is about 60 engineers and I'd say close to 20 of them are from non-traditional backgrounds (coding bootcamps or self taught). It's not that we're doing anything revolutionary, we merely accept that we can handle them, assign them a mentor, and let them learn.
Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?
#486Earlier 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…
Wait until you get old (past 35), I'm a woman (ex web deck "ninja/rockstar/etc") and I can safely say the ageist comments are far worse. No one believes you can keep up the development sprints, or new technologies.
This is also one reason why senior people don't want to mentor -- they'll get stabbed in the back at the first opportunity.
Ageism also goes both ways: I find the output of the current young generation pretty unimaginative and poor. Redecorating OCaml, Erlang and Javascript in order to have a "new" "technology" does not impress me.
Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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? Who uses LOC? I'm talking about completed, tested, accepted features, as defined by our project teams. > Good junior devs will be more skilled in some areas than you are. Well, yeah...of course. I'm not comparing myself to someone who works in an entirely different field…
> I'm talking about completed, tested, accepted features, as defined by our project teams. Still rather strange metrics for productivity in a senior engineer. This is more what I'm taking about: https://zef.me/the-100x-engineer-6d50a690a866 If you're really senior, you shouldn't be working on the kind of features that get delivered at a rate of "5 per sprint". More like on stuff that gets delivered once every year. T…
You do what your team and company needs. If they need me to work on a big re-engineering project, or build a core framework feature, I do it. If they need me to get onto a regular sprint team for a while and churn out the backlog, I do it.
Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
> accountants leave school fully capable of employment Well, fully capable of entry-level employment. Anyone who graduates from a reputable school with a Comp. Sci. or InfoSys type of major is also fully capable of entry-level employment. Accountants aren't really capable of anything but grunt work until they pass the CPA which normally is after several years of grunt work and additional learning and study. Programme…
> Anyone who graduates from a reputable school with a Comp. Sci. or InfoSys type of major is also fully capable of entry-level employment. No, they're really not, for at least a year. It takes at least that long for most new graduates to get over the hump and learn enough of the practical skills and industry practices that their university left them woefully ignorant of, so that they can start being marginally useful…
Code schools try to solve this problem. But they need to become an actual structural part of the industry before companies can really start to rely on them.
Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to believe this, now I'm skeptical. Even if they find holes in the developer's competence, interviewing is not a task, it's a business process orchestrated and controlled by middle management. Say the competent developer finds holes in the interviewee's knowledge and skills, his findings become a line item in the report passed up to said middle management. The middle manager, hopefully not in HR, has to weigh…
This is a symptom of managers not understanding the jobs of the people they're managing. I don't know if that kind of management works under any circumstances, but it definitely can't work if people who don't understand programming (and I specifically mean programming, no matter how well they understand the rest of a developer's job) are managing junior developers.
Of course it is. But in most organizations, managers do not understand software development. That competence is extremely hard to hire.
Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?
#490Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well that sucks time to change the company...
I've personally never heard of any company doubling a developer's salary like that. Have you?
Double, no. But I had a company that gave me a 30-40$ increase one year because it was obvious I was performing at that level.
Then a couple years later they were giving me basically no raise. When I told them I thought I was worth more, they asked me if I could "wait a year".
I got a new job and a huge raise compared to the last one. (Again, 30-40%.)
So while it's possible, it's not always even reliable at the same company that has done it in the past.