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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?

#281

Post by qwertay »

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…

I was lucky enough to get my first job when I knew very little and learned so much on the job and I am very thankful to the company for giving me that opportunity. I worked there for almost 3 years but for the last year I was basically doing an act of charity to the company (Fair because they did the same for me but there is only so long that I can work for almost free). They couldn't afford to pay me a livable amount and I was still working on super basic junior problems.

If they had an option to move up and work on interesting problems than I would have stayed.

I suspect many others are the same. The only people hiring juniors are the ones who can't afford to pay mid level devs and when the juniors become mid level what are they to do but leave.

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

#282

Post by gambiting »

neya wrote: post #279

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…

>>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.

Why was he given so much freedom in writing code? Especially as junior? I'm a senior at this point and I couldn't just arbitrarily decide to use R(or any other language that isn't C++ for that matter) for my job - it just wouldn't go through code review. Because I'm sure you had code review at your work, right? And if you did - who was approving his mess of a code?

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

#283

Post by buro9 »

I'm an Engineering Manager at Cloudflare, and we hire juniors.

But... this was not a thing we always did. For a long while the company was much smaller and we had a limited number of roles open and so we focused on fewer hands that could get more done as each team might only be a couple of people (for example the engineers behind Cloudflare DNS could be counted on a single hand) meaning we hired mostly senior whilst a few juniors were hired where the skills matched well.

As we've grown we've reached the place that to offer progression and growth to our senior engineers into engineering leadership or management means that we acknowledge that you may be a great engineer today but you now need to learn and master communication skills.

We are hiring juniors to give our senior engineers growth opportunities as we need engineers who can be mentored, taught, shown how things work, who will ask questions that challenge the seniors to explain why they've done something the way they have and what considerations were applied.

What I love about where we are now is that this encourages us to hire the most curious, smart, and kind individuals who will benefit the most from that communication. We are now well-placed to grant potentially career shaping and life changing opportunities and to give juniors access to some of the great senior engineers we've been attracting. It's a total win-win.

And having seen this play out, and reflecting on the smaller places I've worked which lacked juniors, and the larger places that had a healthy balance of juniors, and being at Cloudflare long enough to have witnessed this change... I'd say that if you are a junior engineer, consider applying to growing mid-size organisations (250-2,500 employees) as those are the ones that are likely to be under similar needs to fill gaps in a way that helps support the growth and development of their existing engineers as well as their new ones.

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

#284

Post by alex__c »

neya wrote: post #279

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…

Why, yes, I think what you're describing is a management problem: a) the new employee was given customer-impacting tasks without checking their competency properly, and then b) his work quality was not constantly evaluated in a feedback loop, allowing him to continue writing shit code.

I mean, you have a client LEAVE and the person still continues to do exactly the same thing? Excuse me, but that's not only the employee's problem.

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

#285

Post by yhoiseth »

neya wrote: post #279

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…

I think you're right in that one of the major reasons why companies prefer seniors is to reduce risk. But the agency in your story appears to have had such a lack of quality control that it was a disaster waiting to happen. Didn't you have any procedures to prevent things like this from happening?

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

#286

Post by frankchn »

neya wrote: post #279

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…

At some point, shouldn’t his manager fire him if he is unwilling to write code in an “acceptable” language? Also, since he is a junior dev, why is he given any latitude at all in choosing what language or framework to use?

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

#287

Post by collyw »

jrs95 wrote: post #72
dharmab wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't quit your job without your next source of income secured.

I've had 5 jobs now, each lasting about a year and a half at most, and I only quit 1 of them because everyone on the team was being replaced to avoid having to grant any options prior to an acquisition. Twice my employer went out of business entirely, another time they laid off 20% of their workforce to secure more funding, and most recently a company let go all of it's remote developers after a change in leadership.…

I have switched a few times in the last few years, one time was because a start-up wasn't paying us (two devs quit on the same day,I was officially fired for making enough of a fuss).

Not having a job when you are applying for new ones puts you on a back foot with salary negotiations, as you don't have anything to compare it to. However you do have a lot more time and energy to put into the interview process. Especially when people are looking for technical tests and you have limited spare time and energy after work.

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

#288

Post by gambiting »

enraged_camel wrote: post #174
TripleCrown wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia, you'd probably make more money in construction vs software engineering.

That doesn't necessarily mean you'll be happier, however. Most construction jobs are very hard on the body.

I very frequently consider getting any job that involves being outside and doing physical work over sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day. I like programming, but I hate not being outside for vast majority of the day and what this lifestyle is doing to my body.

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

#289

Post by yhoiseth »

jedberg wrote: post #276

> 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, o…

I think you're right that it's not that simple. The really valuable knowledge is not the type you get from introductory tutorials, but the type you get from working on production systems.

GitLab concluded that they didn't have the capacity to train developers unfamiliar with their tech: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/...

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

#290

Post by CathyWest »

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…

> https://tulsaremote.com/

As an aside, what on earth is that page loading that takes long enough to need a progress bar and can't be either progressively loaded or cached?

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