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Who Killed the Junior Developer?

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Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#581

Post by megaman22 »

teddythetwig wrote: post #320
hetspookjee wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh believe me... Coming from the US, the summer between my first and second year, I was compensated 5k for three months of work. When I first heard what was standard in NL I was shocked. Then again, I was also paying 50k per semester for school, soooo yeah, take your pick haha. I wouldn't say slavery, more like indentured servitude. Anyways, I make it my personal goal to give our interns as much of mine and our senio…

I would hope you'd make more than $5k working in software for a summer. I was making that a decade ago wearing a hard hat and pushing a broom in a power plant on my summer breaks...

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#582

Post by bpyne »

My title for my first programming job, circa 1992-3, was Junior Programmer. I was sent for two weeks of Oracle training on my first day. We didn't have a formal mentoring program, but the team was small and everyone was open to helping me anytime I needed it.

My recollection is that "Junior" positions phased out along with training programs as companies demanded pre-trained people. It seems like companies have basically shifted all the cost of training to the individual. This is having an effect on college computer science programs as students and their parents demand programs more catered to industrial needs. (The paradox is that industrial needs change before a student can actually graduate.)

Personally, I would love to work with Juniors and mentor them. In the absence of Juniors, I suggested that I do "lunch and learns" with our Help Desk people so they can be more than just ticket routers: maybe act as analysts before tickets get to senior people like me. As of yet, my manager and the Help Desk manager haven't approved. So, we keep riding the carousel of status quo.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#583

Post by Caveman_Coder »

madamelic wrote: post #569
logfromblammo wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bottom-up control of the development process. Our own apprenticeship pipeline. Our own certifications. Genuine influence over interviewing and hiring practices. Minimum contract terms. Our own lobbyists. Promoting business for members outside of Silicon Valley. Our own jobs board. A general strike fund. Our own retirement planning and pensions system. A backup health insurance option. The lobbyists can start by bring…

God no. I don't want to be mandated to strike and pout over not getting enough money. As long as I am treated fairly (I am) and paid fairly (I am), I am not paying any percentage to some company to tell me to screw over my employer. If some company wants to unionize, have fun but I am not joining that party.

Have you ever been in a union?

> "...pout over not getting enough money"

You're trying to make striking sound childish but there are plenty of legitimate reasons why unions go on strike.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#584

Post by nawitus »

corpMaverick wrote: post #451
g051051 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> good junior devs can code not only "just as fast", but probably faster too! Pfft. I'm about as "senior" as it gets and I'm generally the fastest developer in any team I'm on. I've never met a junior dev that could hold a candle to me, and most senior devs I know are the same...we're coding monsters.

Sr Dev with 26 years of experience. I get my edge not by coding fast. I maximize the amount of work that we don't have to do. - Better (usually simpler) designs. - Breaking the problem and choosing the order in which things are implemented. - Setting up usefull feedback loops. - etc, etc. It is a lot about judgment.

That is "coding fast". Coding fast doesn't mean literally churning out a lot of code and pull requests.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#585

Post by mattmanser »

tensor wrote: post #14
aphextron wrote: post #9

I think the "Junior" title is used entirely by companies to get a discount at salary negotiations these days. I work with a large mix of mid level, senior, and "Junior" developers by title. The practical difference in our technical skill levels is almost nonexistent. The proper progression should be: Intern -> Developer -> Senior/Lead, with Senior/Lead denoting that certain expectations are made of your organizationa…

There is absolutely a skill difference between senior and junior. The problem is that junior developers today somehow think they deserve mid or senior level salaries despite not having the skills. Developers are being told not only that higher level skills like algorithms and big-oh don't matter, but that they are such special people that they can even do jobs completely outside of their specialty like design, manage…

But algorithms and big-oh don't matter. All the CS stuff, by and large, doesn't matter. It's like learning biology when you're a Doctor. Might be slightly useful if you have certain jobs, but if you're a GP it's almost entirely useless. The difficulty in programming a web app is almost entirely complexity management.

I just recreated a multi-million pound company's functionality without a single algo or any thought of big-o.

Can you explain what deep algos or big-o knowledge I need to recreate booking.com. uber, airbnb, etsy, flickr, imgur, etc., but without their scale? Or maybe making an internal data input app with a basic rules engine, which virtually every business needs these days? No big o, as if you're only handling 10 million or so hits a year, you can make some pretty big mistakes and still have a nicely performing site. For algos maybe you might need one algo depending on the business, a ranking algo, or perhaps a pathfinding algo, something that will be extensively discussed on SO and laid out entirely for you, or you might just plug a library in. No CS knowledge required.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#586

Post by pvelagal »

commandlinefan wrote: post #504
vinceguidry wrote: post #364

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…

> always had to lie, cheat, and steal your way into the field Back in the 90's, when I wanted to move up to working with C++ (the hip, new, "in" thing at the time), I bought a book about C++, read through it, worked the examples, and then started interviewing. The interviewers asked all sorts of arcane questions that I hadn't come across in my few months of study, so I was tanking the interviews. The trick I figured…

What you talk about indicates there is a gap between what industry wants/expects and what you learn either from books or in college.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#587

Post by closeparen »

vinceguidry wrote: post #364

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…

This might be a tech company vs. IT cost center in a traditional business thing. What major tech companies don’t have internship and new grad recruiting operations? Netflix is the only one I can think of.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#588

Post by tropshop »

vinceguidry wrote: post #400
jmvoodoo wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

E-commerce is unique in that it has such a massive impact on revenue generation, but the skills needed to effectively manage it are rarely inline with the core competencies of the business.

Most companies attempt to tackle this problem in house, but without proper expertise, there is massive waste in hiring and poor execution. As a consultant, I’ve seen teams waste _years_ fumbling in this cycle, only for me to ship a product that immediately increases revenue in a fraction of the time. It generally only takes a few basic UI improvements and timing strategic automatic email tiggers.

Find a consultant that will make more from what you already have, and move on to your business problems. You don’t need to pivot into an internet company to be successful.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#589

Post by opportune »

delecti wrote: post #526
commandlinefan wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> always had to lie, cheat, and steal your way into the field Back in the 90's, when I wanted to move up to working with C++ (the hip, new, "in" thing at the time), I bought a book about C++, read through it, worked the examples, and then started interviewing. The interviewers asked all sorts of arcane questions that I hadn't come across in my few months of study, so I was tanking the interviews. The trick I figured…

Your story reminds me of the joke/anecdote of the way to cheat on tests. You religiously look over your notes and the textbook in the weeks leading up to the test, so that when you take the test it's like you have a comprehensive cheat sheet with you, but in your head . If the hiring process wasn't able to distinguish between you or who they thought they were looking for, then it wasn't your responsibility to inform…

Reminds me of this skit: http://www.cc.com/video-clips/acaxis/key-and-peele-the-heist

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#590

Post by alistairSH »

megaman22 wrote: post #482
ams6110 wrote: post #478

Earlier 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…

No, they're really not, for at least a year.

Isn't that the definition of entry-level or junior?

FWIW, the four recent graduates I hired this summer are all capable of completing well-defined programming tasks with minimal assistance. Does that mean I spend more time with my PO ensuring those tasks are well-defined and consumable by the new developers? Yeah (but that's our job). Do the senior team members spend part of their day mentoring? Yeah (but that's their job).

As for some of them not hacking it. Yeah that's true. But, I've also interviewed plenty of "senior devs" who were terrible. I've even hired one or two who didn't work out. I just do my best to avoid hiring them.

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