Not true. I run 110 people team for a large retailer. I built this team nearly from scratch. About 80 percent of my team consist of right of college kids or folks with less than 2-3 years of experience. We they are very smart kids. :). I paired them up with other seniors from different department to train them up. We also pay very well. Entry level pay is 80k plus like with only college degree but with hard interview. I Also work very hard to make them successful example include sitting down and knowledge sharing of how the business works or even sitting down to layout framework or debug etc. i truly enjoy working new generation the old is status quo :(.
Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?
401–410 of 495 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they won't raise salary. Not while they can employ people at the salary they're offering
^ this. the fact that some people can be pre-IPO yet hire mostly students who work for nothing, get all pissy when people ask for a raise for staying past 5 consistently, and to boot, writing fake glassdoor reviews because you can't hire actual engineers anymore due to the bad rep you built. I don't know what kind of people would entrust their companies HR data to an organization run like a sweat shop. When you walk…
> When society rewards and protects criminals and punishes those who play by the rules out of humane morals? What does this leave me with?
Europe
Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?
#403Not true. I run 110 people team for a large retailer. I built this team nearly from scratch. About 80 percent of my team consist of right of college kids or folks with less than 2-3 years of experience. We they are very smart kids. :). I paired them up with other seniors from different department to train them up. We also pay very well. Entry level pay is 80k plus like with only college degree but with hard interview…
Where do you work and how can I get in contact?
(I run a YC-backed Computer Science academy that aims to be very rigorous and has incredibly hungry students - https://lambdaschool.com)
Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?
#404Oh. The issue I have seen is many of new grads want work for the big name company or tech companies. And they limit their options. Just be true to yourself that if you want work for tech company they need people who already know cutting edge technology and start to produce from day 10. Where as non tech companies need people who can understand business and how to solve biz problems.
Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's the weird thing — they (because there are two cofounders) were actually paying very competitive salaries (for the local market). I was impressed to hear what some of them were making. So it's not the money. This is only half of what I asked. What about the raises? As someone in another thread chain pointed out, the expected raise from job leaping is maybe 15%. How did the raises your friend gave compare to t…
As a junior, the switch job raise is much higher than that, especially if you decide to move to a larger / more active city (which is not that big of a deal as a junior). During my first job I got raised 12% over 2yearish, and swapping and moving to a larger metropolitan area brought an additional 30%-45% (depending on which offer you looked at). Now ofc there are other factor (higher life cost), but still that's mas…
Absolutely. Fresh out of school, I job hopped twice and ended up with >50% raise. Started at $40k CAD, 18 months on jumped for $48k, and 4 months later (there were other reasons too), jumped for a greenfield project at $65k.
The first job refused to match the $48k offer. I’d probably still be there if they had, a decade on. Awesome place, awesome people, but... student loans and wanting to not live in a dumpy apartment won...
Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Realistically you're looking at a 2-10x increase in this person's compensation over a very short time frame or you'll lose your training investment as they jump ship. This is actually a very helpful risk-mitigation strategy. If you hire someone with less experience at a lower salary expecting to train them and it turns out they're terrible, all you have to do is not promote them. Once they realize they won't be pro…
I'd definitely worry if I were relying on this strategy. 1) What about the employees who won't or can't jump ship? These are the ones that are most important to push along in terms of company health. 2) I'm not a huge fan of the implicit 'firing'- the employee may feel a sense of responsibility to the company and slowly become more and more upset as theyre passed over for promotions. 3) I'd worry about the easy slipp…
All of those are solved by just being candid about their actual chances of promotion, and then actually firing them if they don't take take the hint after a certain period of time (or if their performance gets to the point of justifying being fired for cause).
Assuming it's even a problem to just leave them where they are indefinitely. There are a lot of people who make bad managers but fine low level workers.
Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?
#407This is not a new problem, look at accountants and lawyers and what they have done in their respective industries. The key is for you to walk into the boss' office and ask for what you deserve with a well thought out case.
Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?
#408There's either a cost or benefit of everyone on the team. Programmers generally push the code at a constant velocity in one trajectory between the two. They'll be somewhere between fixing things and making it better to breaking things and creating new problems that eventually need to be undone and re-solved, pushing the quality down and deadlines back. People tending towards the second group are a waste of time and m…
There's an article on the second group - The Net Negative Producing Programmer http://pyxisinc.com/NNPP_Article.pdf
> We've known since the early sixties, but have never come to grips with the implications that there are net negative producing programmers (NNPPs) on almost all projects, who insert enough spoilage to exceed the value of their production. So, it is important to make the bold statement: Taking a poor performer off the team can often be more productive than adding a good one. Although important, it is difficult to deal with the NNPP. Most development managers do not handle negative aspects of their programming staff well. This paper discusses how to recognize NNPPs, and remedial actions necessary for project success.
Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?
#409I've built a team from trained-up junior devs, and it was great, I would recommend this route for anyone building a team. BUT... you have to have people who can train and teach as well as code. There are personality traits that don't align with this. The typical "aspy Dave" stereotype of a rockstar programmer is not good at this. So you have to align the entire team from day 1 as being a training environment as well…
I had to more or less fight them off over every position we hired for, because they didn't understand anything about coding, IT or creativity, and would just look for relevant experience in a similar field. I’m a dev coach, which means I can run circles around my client’s developers (except usually one or two). However if I ever wanted to get hired as an actual employee at any of my clients I couldn’t. I’m a high sch…
HR is the "no one ever gets fired for buying IBM" of hiring. Not really good, but minimizes risks for all involved.
Re: Ask HN: Why not more hiring of junior devs, then on-the-job-training?
#410I'm currently looking for a junior dev role. The issues I'm finding is
A: They expect you to have 4 years of experience or be a college degree. I have neither in software development or
B: They are these terrible "apprenticeships" where they also expect you to have 3-4 years experience, train you for 3 months on their technology stack, and make you jump through flaming hula hoops.
I see a lot of comments talking about how you train juniors and then they leave but I'm skeptical of that. From my personal perspective, I'm not looking to get trained then jump to SF for a 150k a year job. Pay me a decent wage, give me ongoing feedback, and make sure career progression is laid out and I'm good with that.