Ask HN: Hiring Mentors for Junior Developers

#1

Post by vladimirsvsv77 » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 12:33 AM UTC

My team and I, we’re working in HR-Tech area. We found out that there’s a big problem on the market — hiring developers. Although companies feel a lack of tech-related people, they are not ready to hire junior developers. We see the second problem here - juniors are struggling to land a job. So why companies do not employ junior developers?

During several interviews with recruiters, founders and CTO's, we realized that the main problem is that there are no people in companies who are ready to teach juniors. Experienced team members don’t have enough time for mentoring as they have to perform their tasks. It made us think that maybe there is an opportunity to create a service that can provide remote mentors to these companies. These distant mentors could teach juniors, review their code, answer some basic questions, help with dev tools and frameworks, etc.

Maybe you have experience of hiring a mentor for junior developers at your company? I've heard only from one company that they did that.

Re: Ask HN: Hiring Mentors for Junior Developers

#2

Post by halleonard » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 12:47 AM UTC

I think this is a good idea -- however, in my experience 90% of the issues with Jrs is they don't yet know how to ask questions. So much of mentoring involves finding ways to encourage them to speak up. Once that's achieved then the amount of work required to get them up to speed feels much less steep. Further, teaching Jrs how to communicate is largely a company culture issue where openness is a given. Lacking that, with even the best mentor the Jr will struggle.

Re: Ask HN: Hiring Mentors for Junior Developers

#3

Post by verdverm » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 12:52 AM UTC

> Experienced team members don’t have enough time for mentoring as they have to perform their tasks.

Problem is right there, cultural, the perception that the only valuable activity is plugging away at the keyboard. I think many companies don't provide the time and flexibility for their people to grow together. Probably short-term vs long-term thinking.

The major issues with non-employed mentors are code access and familiarity. I would never allow this for security reasons. The mentor would not know their way around the code, tools, and practices.

Re: Ask HN: Hiring Mentors for Junior Developers

#4

Post by PaulHoule » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 1:02 AM UTC

I would love to be a part of that. Please send a message to the contact information in my HN bio.

Re: Ask HN: Hiring Mentors for Junior Developers

#5

Post by vladimirsvsv77 » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 1:07 AM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #4

I would love to be a part of that. Please send a message to the contact information in my HN bio.

Great! I will write to you.

Re: Ask HN: Hiring Mentors for Junior Developers

#6

Post by vladimirsvsv77 » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 1:13 AM UTC

verdverm wrote: post #3

> Experienced team members don’t have enough time for mentoring as they have to perform their tasks. Problem is right there, cultural, the perception that the only valuable activity is plugging away at the keyboard. I think many companies don't provide the time and flexibility for their people to grow together. Probably short-term vs long-term thinking. The major issues with non-employed mentors are code access and f…

Yes, this could be a problem, but we're thinking to solve it by signing an additional NDA. But I'm not sure that this is a good solution...