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

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

#241

Post by kraftman »

They can hire a mid/ senior developer who will get up to speed fairly quickly and be able to work on their ownand then will leave after a year or two, or they can hire a junior Dev who will take longer to get up to speed, and use up the time of other more senior devs, or increase tech debt if they go off on their own, and then they'll leave after a year or two.

To put it another way they can either pay a senior developer a lot of money to do work for them, or pay a senior developer a lot of money to teach a junior Dev (who they're also paying),only to lose them both after x amount of time.

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

#242

Post by melkiaur »

dangwu wrote: post #131
ivansavz wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not just the salary. It's often about personal growth and wanderlust. Let me try an odd comparison: after graduating, would you choose to live with your parents if they fed you even more and offered you an even bigger room with more furniture ?

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

#243

Post by joeberon »

city41 wrote: post #78
rubicon33 wrote: post #12

False premise. There is no shortage of devs. That has been a complete fabrication, made up entirely by big tech companies, in a propaganda push to promote more and more people getting into CS. It's entirely so they can pay developers less.

Then why do developers get contacted by recruiters constantly? Every developer I know gets contacted. Yet no non-tech colleagues I know experience anything similar in their industry. I'm not saying I disagree with you, I'm genuinely curious.

Just because they're being contacted doesn't mean job offers actually come out of it

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

#244

Post by mixmastamyk »

beilabs wrote: post #92

Over the past three years we've employed a team of 19 software engineers in Nepal. Bar 3 of them, we've trained up 16 developers from Interns to fantastic engineers working across phoenix, elixir, ruby, kubernetes and javascript projects. We've treated them well, trained them up, brought them on board interesting projects. When it comes to staff so far we've a great retention rate. Nepal has a huge problem retaining…

Nepal barely had computers twenty years ago, outside of expensive internet cafes.

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

#245

Post by rorykoehler »

coder543 wrote: post #185
fooker wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok then, can you explain why wages for programming jobs are low-ish in Europe even when there is, apparently, a shortage?

These are just my thoughts, take them with a grain of salt: Success makes more success. If you're a billion dollar company, you can afford to pay more for employees. This lets you hire better developers, which lets you be even more successful. If you're in a poor country and you're trying to start a company... you're still poor. The fact that you need developers doesn't suddenly make you rich enough to afford the sam…

Germany isn't poor though and the wages are lowish still (this comment isn't to discredit the validity of your comment).

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

#246

Post by mk89 »

Our industry simply thinks that the more experienced you are, the better it is. I can tell you from my recent experience that microservices, kubernetes and the cloud, in general, have made experience with old desktop apps completely useless, for example. Not only useless, but counterproductive actually, because you think you are doing the right thing. So, experience alone doesn't help.

Why do people still keep hiring more experienced devs then? Many times because of bad hiring management skills, or because they don't want to officially have to mentor a young dev. In the end mentoring happens nevertheless even with seniors, though!

The main idea is that a senior dev will be up to speed much faster than a junior dev. While this is most of the time true (especially if the senior dev has already worked with the same domain and with the same set of technologies used by the company she is applying for), it has some drawbacks. For example, not every senior dev is ready to change, to improve, etc. Not every senior dev has the same speed of learning and "hunger" of a guy who just finished his college. A young dev is typically more malleable than a senior dev that "in my previous company we did it this way, and it always worked, this is crazy what you are doing here", that is crucial to fit culturally.

This leads to the second part of my post. From what I see, this trend is actually changing, and while it's sad because senior devs can bring a lot on the table (like, typically they are less hasty than younger devs), it's also good that our industry is starting to understand we are not just a bunch of people pressing keys and moving a mouse randomly - the more keys you have pressed in your lifetime, the better it is.

More and more companies are "hiring for attitude", or at least they think they do. There is also a book about it with the same name, which I recommend.

Shortage of devs, as someone said, is a myth. Such companies should start wondering why they can't find the right people. Maybe it's them doing the wrong thing? :)

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

#247

Post by mixmastamyk »

fizx wrote: post #160

While you might say "I don't know React, but will start learning it as soon as I come into work," someone else is saying "React is so cool! Yeah, I haven't done much with it, but I was playing around with it the other week and I made a little todo app. My code was so much cleaner than doing it the old way." Which person gets hired? Companies are willing to do on-the-job training, as long as the person appears enthusi…

The second will get hired, but may be a much worse employee. Also tech stacks are exploding, so learning everything is not possible any longer.

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

#248

Post by arvinsim »

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…

> if there was some formal, or informal understanding that candidates "trained on the job" would stay for a few years, I think companies would be more open to building junior devs.

There are already many companies that lock you in contract in exchange for comprehensive training.

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

#249

Post by growtofill »

flexie wrote: post #221
pascalxus wrote: post #136

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…

It is far from a myth. If it was a myth, salaries wouldn't be increasing so much, while the number of developers also increase. The demand for developers exceeds the supply so much that this is possible. Do you know any other major industry, where people with little or no formal training can get in and up so fast? Where people in their early or mid twenties routinely make 6 figures? I don't. The median salary is now…

Are the salaries actually increasing in the US? In Ukraine, they have been mostly stale: https://jobs.dou.ua/salaries/dynamics/

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

#250

Post by nnq »

HOW the heck CAN you evaluate potential or learning speed in a 30min interview?! I've been a couple times on the interviewing side of an interview (being an engineer), and trust me, evaluating a senior is 1000% easier than evaluation a junior: resume makes sense, the fact that he has experience that may overlap yours makes it easy to come up with relevant and revealing questions during and interview etc.

Evaluating a junior is SCAAARY! You have no idea what to ask him so that you can get relevant answers!

...so most people "give up" and throw an algoritmic puzzle or something like that hoping that "raw IQ + ability to manifest it during the stress of the interview" means "she has a reasonable chance of being useful for the company".

As a startup the risk of wasting time onboarding a junior that turns up not to be useful it might simply not be worth it.

Also, this is the reason why companies like banks still look at education when hiring juniors, more like "heck, maybe the top-tier universities did some filtering themselves so it would make our job a little bit easier".

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