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Who Killed the Junior Developer?

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Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#621

Post by walshemj »

humanrebar wrote: post #331
virgilp wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Why can't you hire long-term? You can , but I have never been offered a multi-year employment contract. Employers seem to prefer the flexibility of being able to terminate employment sooner than that.

So charge the self employed contractor rates then

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#622

Post by michaelchisari »

mattjsmith wrote: post #476
dbingham wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they aren't a rockstar. And frankly, I've spent my career cleaning up the obfuscated, badly documented, untested code of "rockstar" devs. The idea of a "rockstar" you seem to be referring to has, in my experience, been a dev who can go into a corner and pump out high volumes of code with little supervision or collaboration. That's great, except no one else can make sense of the code they pump out, so when it com…

That's why I've always told people that I'm a "studio musician" developer. Not a rock star, but a competent professional the studio calls when they need to make a record.

That's great. I like to say I'm a "master carpenter" for the same reason.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#623

Post by tomxor »

jmvoodoo wrote: post #381
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…

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…

> Hiring Jrs btw is its own skill as you are filtering for potential not skill or knowledge. Identifying the person who is passionate about learning, has dedication to the craft and pride in their work

I think this is so true of software development roles, but doesn't it actually apply to every hire? unless you have a _very_ specific role with explicit skill set, senior roles need to be just as flexible and able to learn new things quickly.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#624

Post by walshemj »

Retric wrote: post #457
virgilp wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I am someone with 25 years of experience, does that count as "worked closely with"? Good junior devs are... well, by definition, good. They're just younger, and less experienced - but every bit as smart as you are, and pretty skilled in the art of coding. If anything, they have more time than I do and are a lot more eager to "prove themselves". I don't view the value I add as "can code features faster"...

Good junior devs can also have 15+ years of non professional experience from starting as a kid. It's a wide enough bucket that talking about just the top end is very misleading, however the median jr dev is relatively slow and bug prone.

If they have not done any real coding before going to uni I could understand - this BTW is what the raspberry pi was originally created for.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#625

Post by Consultant32452 »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #543
johnnyanmac wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where the heck are these kinds of companies? I've heard jumping for a $10-20k raise (so, roughly 20-30%), but double for a junior? Unless COL influences stuff, I'd be wondering what he did right and knock that off as an outlier.

His junior position probably doesn’t have a junior label, and the next one might have a senior.

This is the correct answer.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#626

Post by bovermyer »

laythea wrote: post #597
shabangcohen wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a woman currently applying/interviewing for a new grad role, I think you're definitely right about most companies caring only about current knowledge/skill.

Why is that bad? Jobs should be filled based on skill/knowledge. (The ability to learn is a skill too, one that means what you know currently matters less). I take slight offence to your statement. Why is being a woman relevant to anything, unless your company is going for 50/50 male female. But in my opinion that is wrong, and amounts to sex discrimination against men, because if 50% of roles are filled by men, even…

Building diversity is an important component of forward progress, since it engenders a broader experiential pool to draw from.

In the case of gender, female developers have been shut out of the industry for long enough that corrective action has to be taken to balance the scales. Until such time as that happens, "sex discrimination against men" is impossible.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#627

Post by swyx »

bkovacev wrote: post #298
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.

hello, recent bootcamp grad in nyc here. pple are asking that much because other companies are offering that much. I'm sympathetic to the cost perspective for employers, but that is actually the price that many companies are willing to pay (source: got multiple >120k offers myself)

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#628

Post by walshemj »

tropshop wrote: post #588
vinceguidry wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is because business regards its technical staff "in comtempt" and that is a direct quote from one of my previous bosses (a director at on of the largest publishers in the world)

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#630

Post by michaelt »

thomaslangston wrote: post #439
binarycheese wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you will need two senior devs. This is because rockstar devs rarely want to mentor junior devs nor attend meetings. Most inventors are not professors.

If you don't want to teach, you're not a rockstar. The best developers I know have always been ready to show and explain what and why and how. Inventors love to talk about their inventions.

Teaching isn't a simple matter you can flatten down to like/dislike.

One aspect of teaching is explaining your inventions to your peers.

But another aspect is telling a new graduate what a version control system is and why you need one. Then doing the same for your build system, continuous integration system, staging environment, code review, bug tracker, style guide, and so on.

Seems to me those are quite different skills - I can easily imagine a person who is good at / enjoys one might not be good at / enjoy the other.

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