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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?

#271

Post by a_imho »

sgarman wrote: post #167
pandler wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's hard to do at a startup though with FANG salaries and benefits being so extreme. You really have to double down on the value prop of small agile teams, culture etc. Even if you nail that it's hard to turn down 2-3x salaries.

In my non SV experience, most people will leave for +20-30% though, which quite accurately reflects the incompetence (and/or ego) of managers. It does not even cover locating and hiring a new talent. Nevertheless they are happy to pay hiring agencies through the nose. Sometimes I wonder whether they get kickbacks from it.

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

#272

Post by collyw »

patmcc wrote: post #200
ben_jones wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem from zero to hero is more than that. Entry-level college graduate non-developer positions might net 50-60k even in the Bay Area. So if you hire a 22 year old with a degree at that base and then teach them how to be a react pro over the course of two years they will then be eligible for 100k+ salaries. That's a 200%+ increase that is very difficult for even modern businesses to take sitting down. If Starbu…

>>That's a 200%+ increase that is very difficult for even modern businesses to take sitting down. Because businesses would rather have a person leave and then hire someone at 1.5x or 2x their salary than just pay the first person 2x what they were making the year before. This happens all the time . Employers want to have 2x people at 1x prices, and that doesn't work for long.

One place I worked "wasn't able" to give me a pay rise, yet they were able to hire 1 and a half people to replace me (one full time and one on split between projects).

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

#273

Post by growlist »

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…

> an increasing amount of software developers have no other training than online courses and still make salaries that would make other professionals with 4-5-10 years of education envious

When oh when are we going to get these salaries in the UK.. because I'm not seeing them.

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

#274

Post by lmiller1990 »

oh-kumudo wrote: post #169
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…

Realistically it will work only when the job market liquidity is low. Think of Japan, where changing job is like a lifetime event, training is graciously provided, since the firm assumed that your loyalty is guaranteed. Or in case of some companies in China, where they can sue you if you quit your job before the agreed years are met on your contract. Both seems undesirable to me personally.

This may have been true for some industries historically in japan, however modern day softwave developers will change job every 2-3 years, same as in the west, for the same reasons.

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

#275

Post by mixmastamyk »

salmo wrote: post #183

I'm guessing you're looking for a job in a saturated market (west coast, NY). I'll suggest looking elsewhere at companies that are not primarily tech (but have large IT shops). I mean Fortune 500s, not mom-and-pop. And be willing to shift out of front-end, unless you just love UIs. The pay will be lower, but the cost-of-living will also be muuuuch lower. And you may have the opportunity to be a bigger fish in a small…

There’s no keeping up any more. It worked in the nineties, but stacks have exploded. Try keeping up with 50,000 MS employees or 100k floss devs, or millions of js devs.

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

#276

Post by jedberg »

> when it would take days or a couple weeks to learn XYZ framework/library/whatever to the level of competence that is required for the position.

Here is their thought process:

If you believe that is the case, then why not spend a couple weeks learning XYZ, so that the next time you need XYZ you can say you know it?

Either it's not actually that simple, which means that it would take a long time for you to ramp up, or it is that simple, and you lack initiative.

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

#277

Post by collyw »

GordonS wrote: post #222
throwaway3265 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a schema that I've seen used in Nestle which is quite bad TBH: they offer a course that you have to pass for a position this guy was trying to get to. This training course was fairly long (4 years) and expensive for an individual, however the company would pay for it. BUT only on the condition the student/employee would finish it and stay in the company for at least 1 more year. Now I hear you, they cannot f…

This is actually quite a common arrangement at larger companies in the UK. I don't have a problem with it myself - it's simple to understand, and the company is giving you something of high value, and retaining your services for a minimum period in return.

Yes, the only part is that it was mandatory. You should be given the option if there are conditions like that.

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

#278

Post by mixmastamyk »

coder543 wrote: post #226
mixmastamyk wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a common misconception but there are rich folks in poor countries, and they can be potentially be persuaded to invest locally.

Then why aren't they already investing? Why does their local economy not already have companies paying high enough wages to attract highly talented developers, due to their careful investments? Those wealthy individuals can be convinced, perhaps, but only if they're open to idea and the risk to their own personal estate.

Sometimes the country is disfunctional. Sometimes those in power are profiting from it.

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

#279

Post by neya »

If you work in an intense environment like an agency, particularly one with high profile clients, then on the job training causes more problems than it solves.

We had a guy who wrote a production web application software, completely untested in R lang (which is the worst choice for this situation) with terrible code (Think of mixing camel case and snake case, sometimes with same names (ExVariable and ex_variable and they both refer to different things). This thing kept failing over and over again to the point where the clients terminated their contracts with us.

I had the bad luck of having to re-write his R code into Python which was suitable for this specific problem than R was and had to explain to this junior dev. Still, he wouldn't budge and kept writing untested production software in R when in reality most of his peers already knew Python and Ruby, whereas he was the only one with R knowledge and no one else in the company could understand his code, not even people familiar with R.

Eventually he costed the company a lot of revenue, in terms of clients, and the company almost hit bankruptcy to the point where almost everyone quit (including me).

Learning on the job isn't such a bad idea if the impact you have isn't as much. Like writing in-house applications for experimentation. Other than that, it's a terrible idea.

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

#280

Post by brod »

a_imho wrote: post #271
sgarman wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's hard to do at a startup though with FANG salaries and benefits being so extreme. You really have to double down on the value prop of small agile teams, culture etc. Even if you nail that it's hard to turn down 2-3x salaries.

In my non SV experience, most people will leave for +20-30% though, which quite accurately reflects the incompetence (and/or ego) of managers. It does not even cover locating and hiring a new talent. Nevertheless they are happy to pay hiring agencies through the nose. Sometimes I wonder whether they get kickbacks from it.

you can stop wondering, many offer kickbacks.
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