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Who Killed the Junior Developer?

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Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#731

Post by JimboOmega »

mightybyte wrote: post #538
wlesieutre wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once they're trained up to a point where another company is willing to pay them more for a more senior position, you could give them a raise? Congrats! You trained a junior dev and they turned into a senior dev.

Awhile back I left my first software job (they did have systematic hiring of new grads) at a very large corporation because I was moving to another city. As it happened, that company also had an office in the city I was moving to. I applied for a position at the new location and they gave me an offer. But their offer was something like 15-20k lower than just about all the other offers I had. Apparently there was some…

Absolutely happened at my first job, too. There was a huge fuss over how much a raise they could give me and how they were capped to a certain limit.

It's great you love my work but it's not enough of a reason that I shouldn't walk across the street to your competitor and get paid 20% more.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#732

Post by bovermyer »

coldtea wrote: post #631
bovermyer wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Building diversity is an important component of forward progress, since it engenders a broader experiential pool to draw from. Only the pool has to be created in the lower levels (education etc) not imposed at the company level with less good candidates favored just because of their sex. > Until such time as that happens, "sex discrimination against men" is impossible. It's very possible, if meritocracy is sidestep…

Gender is only one factor. It's what I focused on here because of context. Nationality, native language, childhood population density, and even hobby choices all play a part in experiential makeup.

"Meritocracy" is almost always a flawed idea, because it relies on the principle of those in positions of authority choosing the best candidate for a given role; the key word here is "best." That's a subjective term, and usually favors a small set of criteria over a more holistic view. People, with some exceptions, are bad at seeing the big picture.

With very few exceptions, I will always favor candidates with broader experience over those with narrow strengths.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#733

Post by Declanomous »

collyw wrote: post #358
Game_Ender wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those headphones only block constant background noise, not conversations . In order to do that you have to put your hearing at risk with enough actual noise to overwhelm the rest.

I have tried some decent quality ones. They don't block out conversations completely, but it does sound a lot quieter. They are definitely an improvement over not wearing them.

I tried this, and my problem was that I would end up with "listening fatigue" or whatever you want to call it after 6 hours of listening every day.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#734

Post by bcbrown »

cimmanom wrote: post #300
amriksohata wrote: post #192

Got a side question.. how do I tell my junior developer who's still junior that he's not ready for being promoted. He feels he is because he understands more of the code base now, he often makes a lot of mistakes and is ready to point out the mistakes of others. He also does not get off his desk to communicate or question requirements.

Find or create a skills matrix for developer seniority. There are a few floating around out there if you Google.

Along the same lines, decide what the bar will be for promotion, tell them where they're lacking, and when they reach that bar, promote them.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#735

Post by heyoni »

bitwize wrote: post #544
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…

Near as I can tell, the term stems from the 80s computer gaming industry, in which the game studio heads got the idea to promote the individual developers by name as if they were rock stars, and oftentimes attempt to treat them to the "rock star lifestyle" (girls, parties, etc.) in order to keep their output from flagging. In those days, games were often written by teams as small as one, and no bigger than a handful…

Sid Meier's Civilization!

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#736

Post by ranci »

> For my own part, I’m happy to mentor folks

Oh joy, I can't wait to be mentored by someone who held a bunch of random front end positions for about 8 months, has 2 endorsements for javascript, nothing for backend, no degree in this field, considers themselves an author now and uses their gender as a weapon/excuse in their public musings.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#737

Post by spicytunacone »

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…

>But that means junior starting salaries around 50k which no one is taking.

Where are these $50k/yr junior positions?

I finished undergrad at a time when $60k/yr was a safe starting point for negotiation but recent searches only show me $15.50/hr at best for a junior. I acknowledge the tenuous distinction, if any, between "junior" and "entry-level" may be a factor for the disparity here.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#738

Post by ranci »

The great irony of this article is that the author has degrees in forestry and agriculture and a very weak development skillset based on their LinkedIn profile and they still got a junior developer job.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#739

Post by spicytunacone »

golergka wrote: post #151

I've built a new of 4 developers team since September. 2 out of those devs are Juniors; or at least, formally they are, as this is their first "real", paid job. But at the same time, these two are much better than many, many "senior" developers who came in asking for very competitive salaries and couldn't answer the most basic of questions. (My satndard is to ask about stack and heap; most of them just say something…

>when I asked him to talk about something he knew very well and was passionate about, explained AI techniques (game AI, not ML) that I never even dove into myself

An aside, would you mind sharing what he shared with you, if you can recall?

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#740

Post by drdeadringer »

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…

> You have always had to lie, cheat, and steal your way into the field.

This terrifies me in terms of my rewriting my resume for my next job cycle. Is any minuscule semblance of honesty on a resume completely dead as a zombie shot through the brain?

I'm serious here. If I have never used XYZ tech, should I list that as a matter of course now should the position require it, and then fudge the results with a few searches and try-out "tests"?

In "current year": "I know what color it is" truly makes me an expert if I can snake-oil my way into it?

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