Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?

#131

Post by dangwu » Thu, Nov 22, 2018, 6:03 AM UTC

ivansavz wrote: post #118

oh-kumudo wrote: post #103

I think the reason is simple: once the junior dev is trained, they will leave. To be clear, I am not saying that they are obliged to stay in the company that trained them or being ungrateful in any sense, I am simply implying this is a common outcome from such training. In software industry, the first job switch in 2 years seems pretty common and reasonable, and the dev by that time would be able to strike a better j…

A friend of mine runs a web dev shop and I have seen him train at least six people from zero-to-pro (very smart, fast learners with a math background) and what you described is exactly what happens. Once they become medium/advanced-level proficient they often quit and move on to other, bigger companies. If there was some formal, or informal understanding that candidates "trained on the job" would stay for a few years…

Give proper annual raises to pay people what they’re worth instead of barely keeping up with inflation.

After two years, you’re essentially a mid-level engineer and the money you can command is way more than what a junior developer with two annual “raises” is typically paid.

Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?

#132

Post by anovikov » Thu, Nov 22, 2018, 6:05 AM UTC

The very obvious reason is that a junior dev is by definition replaceable (because he can't work on his own), and thus makes no sense hiring full time locally - better (cheaper) be outsourced to India or Ukraine. Outsourced people are unreliable, but with junior ones, this is OK, some trial and error is quite affordable.

Or better yet, you can hire a senior in Ukraine for the price of junior in the U.S.. And junior ones in Ukraine just do ghostcoding for the seniors until they can find clients of their own.

Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?

#133

Post by sheepmullet » Thu, Nov 22, 2018, 6:07 AM UTC

I think many companies simply don’t know how!

Once big companies stopped investing in training because they thought they could push most new work offshore people gradually forgot how to do it!

Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?

#134

Post by jib » Thu, Nov 22, 2018, 6:10 AM UTC

ako wrote: post #123

oh-kumudo wrote: post #103

I think the reason is simple: once the junior dev is trained, they will leave. To be clear, I am not saying that they are obliged to stay in the company that trained them or being ungrateful in any sense, I am simply implying this is a common outcome from such training. In software industry, the first job switch in 2 years seems pretty common and reasonable, and the dev by that time would be able to strike a better j…

this only happens if the place training the junior doesn't offer them a decent medium/senior salary. This probably also means they won't be able to attract new medior develops, since they pay too little.

Prisoners dilemma.

New guys are expensive (especially in time), experienced guys are valuable.

If I spend a bunch of money/time on new guys I have less to spend on experienced guys compared to the company that just spends it on experienced guys. So, the companies that don’t train new can pay experienced more, thus getting the experienced guys.

Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?

#135

Post by ako » Thu, Nov 22, 2018, 6:13 AM UTC

daze42 wrote: post #39

tylerritchie wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no shortage of developers, but big tech companies are attempting to increase the supply of developers to reduce the cost of developers?

Law of supply and demand. If supply increases but demand stays the same then the price will fall.

It's more complex than this, as there many supply and demand interactions relevant when creating a piece of software. The company selling the product knows what price it can ask for the product in a supply and demand market. This price dictates what costs are acceptable when producing the product, and this also has impact on how much they can offer the developers.

They may be able to hire more devs if they increase salary, but this would mean that the price of the end product would become too high, and they would go out of business.

Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?

#136

Post by pascalxus » Thu, Nov 22, 2018, 6:14 AM UTC

First of all the shortage of devs is mostly a myth. Companies that know how to hire don't have problems hiring. the problem is most software companies don't know how to hire and thus have a lot of problems. Or they're located in some impossible location like palo alto or San francisco and try to low ball everyone with salaries under 200K in a location where housing costs 3million$ plus.

About hiring junior devs. You have to understand, most engineers that interview you don't understand or perhaps simply don't appreciate the concept of ROI. So, they're not thinking, geez we can get a guy with a few years less for 20k less and still come out way ahead. No they're simplying thinking, we want the best possible talent, regardless of cost. Very few people in the hiring process actually know how much that developer will cost, nor do most people care. This leads to a huge bias for more experience developers.

Furthermore, the engineers that interview you may be excellent engineers, great at programming and design but probably have very little experience or training in Hiring people. I know when I started interviewing people I made mistakes. It wasn't until I had a good 5-10 people under my belt that I really got good at hiring people. Most companies don't dedicate much resources to training devs to do hiring, partly because leads and managers often don't know how to do it well themselves. this leads to all kinds of mistakes.

My advice to you, is try not to take it personally and think any less of yourself. Failing an interview isn't necessarily your failure, it could be the ones who interviewed you that failed. But, it never hurts to learn everything you can and always expand your knowledge. There's nearly an infinite amount of Free tutorials and learning resources online, so learn as much as you can.

Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?

#137

Post by stormbrew » Thu, Nov 22, 2018, 6:15 AM UTC

ivansavz wrote: post #118

oh-kumudo wrote: post #103

I think the reason is simple: once the junior dev is trained, they will leave. To be clear, I am not saying that they are obliged to stay in the company that trained them or being ungrateful in any sense, I am simply implying this is a common outcome from such training. In software industry, the first job switch in 2 years seems pretty common and reasonable, and the dev by that time would be able to strike a better j…

A friend of mine runs a web dev shop and I have seen him train at least six people from zero-to-pro (very smart, fast learners with a math background) and what you described is exactly what happens. Once they become medium/advanced-level proficient they often quit and move on to other, bigger companies. If there was some formal, or informal understanding that candidates "trained on the job" would stay for a few years…

The other replies touch on this, but I'm gonna get straight to the point:

Does your friend give them actual, meaningful raises as they grow? Is he actually paying competitively to begin with?

Because I think if you have this pattern that consistently, it's really likely that either you're underpaying to begin with or your raises suck or are not even present.

I love working at small companies. It's by far my preference. But none of the small companies I've ever worked at offered anything like the comp and comp growth that the big corp I currently work at does. In fact, almost all of them offered me near zero compensation growth over time. And in real dollars that effectively means negative growth.

Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?

#138

Post by sheepmullet » Thu, Nov 22, 2018, 6:16 AM UTC

ivansavz wrote: post #118

oh-kumudo wrote: post #103

I think the reason is simple: once the junior dev is trained, they will leave. To be clear, I am not saying that they are obliged to stay in the company that trained them or being ungrateful in any sense, I am simply implying this is a common outcome from such training. In software industry, the first job switch in 2 years seems pretty common and reasonable, and the dev by that time would be able to strike a better j…

A friend of mine runs a web dev shop and I have seen him train at least six people from zero-to-pro (very smart, fast learners with a math background) and what you described is exactly what happens. Once they become medium/advanced-level proficient they often quit and move on to other, bigger companies. If there was some formal, or informal understanding that candidates "trained on the job" would stay for a few years…

> very smart, fast learners

Well that is your friends first problem!

For a smart fast learner your friend isn’t providing a benefit worth the cost of a couple of years of low job growth.

Your friend should look for candidates who are average learners, want a steady paycheck, and don’t want to do anything tech related outside of work hours.

Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?

#139

Post by pandler » Thu, Nov 22, 2018, 6:16 AM UTC

oh-kumudo wrote: post #103

I think the reason is simple: once the junior dev is trained, they will leave. To be clear, I am not saying that they are obliged to stay in the company that trained them or being ungrateful in any sense, I am simply implying this is a common outcome from such training. In software industry, the first job switch in 2 years seems pretty common and reasonable, and the dev by that time would be able to strike a better j…

I had a conversation the other day with some work colleagues where we were talking about a friends dad who just retired from working as an engineer at AT&T for something like 35 years. We made some jokes about how that would be unthinkable these days and the conversation moved on.

Loyalty goes both ways. If you want someone to stick around, incentivize them to.

Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?

#140

Post by LoSboccacc » Thu, Nov 22, 2018, 6:17 AM UTC

tempestn wrote: post #63

deepGem wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am just curious, why do you need to test somone's ability to find max of a list. Language designers have recognized this as a basic utility and incorporated them into the language. Is the hypothesis that - if someone cannot write a simple algo to find the max of a list then what other difficult tasks he/she can perform ? Even though in reality we all understand no one needs to write a max algorithm.

Yeah, I'd say the latter. Finding the max element in a list is an extremely straightforward thing to code; if someone can't do that, it's almost certain they're going to be lacking in a lot of other ways as well. Of course it's not the only thing you would check, but it would make for an easy early filter (which, unfortunately but conveniently, would probably weed out the majority of your resumes).

Fizzbuz removed us 90% of potential hires and saved a lot of money in cutting interview short.

Granted this is a rural area and ymmv depending on the local average skill level, but still if you want to grade someone from zero to ten you need to start with exercisers close to zero.

Otoh if your interview questions are all 9 or 10 in difficulty most of your candidate will fail them and you'll have no data for a decision because all 8s will fail to answer in the same way as 6s and 3s

Much better to start with some stupid loop and work up from there.