Inexperienced doesn't mean stupid
eftimov.net
Inexperienced doesn't mean stupid
1–10 of 43 posts
Re: Inexperienced doesn't mean stupid
#2It took me 3 QA jobs and a very good manager to get my programming career off the ground, so I can completely relate to the message of this blog.
Re: Inexperienced doesn't mean stupid
#3One the best accidents in my life was getting a student job. Without the 'years of experience' it gave me, I don't think employers would have given me the time of day. With it, I did get the time of day and most places cared more about the work I'd been doing than the grades I'd been getting.
Re: Inexperienced doesn't mean stupid
#4"Last, but not least, how on Earth do they (employers) think that they can grow their company if they don’t train juniors? If you do not hire juniors, in ten years there won’t be any seniors left to hire."
I think that this article has identified a serious risk here. Who is going to want to major in CS in the future if they know that the odds of getting an entry-level job in their field when they graduate are getting worse and worse?
Re: Inexperienced doesn't mean stupid
#5One the best accidents in my life was getting a student job. Without the 'years of experience' it gave me, I don't think employers would have given me the time of day. With it, I did get the time of day and most places cared more about the work I'd been doing than the grades I'd been getting.
This is the only route I know of to get past the absurdity of "entry-level" job descriptions requiring 2–4 years experience.
Re: Inexperienced doesn't mean stupid
#6The problem is that for every Joe who has no experience but can program there are 100s others who have no experience and cannot program. You will learn this as soon as you decide to hire a junior and teach him or her. And then what will you do?
Even phone screening takes time. It might take just as little as 5 minutes to fail somebody on a phone screen but with all the set up and scheduling you are unlikely to process more than a dozen screens per day per interviewer. And people passing such a short phone screen are not guaranteed to be fit even for a junior position. A face to face interview takes even more time and money. Eventually you need to cut your costs.
As for the observation that most vacancies have hard requirements... The vacancies that don't get closed very quickly so the most vacancies you see are the ones that are looking for people who are hard to find.
Re: Inexperienced doesn't mean stupid
#7> But, our guy Joe knew that he is capable of learning fast and working his ass off if he was given the chance. Chance. Yes, he located the problem – employers do not want to give chances.
You can't be expected to get a job by saying "I know my grades are bad but I can learn!" You can get a job by saying "I know my grades are bad but look at all these projects I finished that show I can produce." Don't blame the companies or the job market. You have to make the opportunities come to you.
Re: Inexperienced doesn't mean stupid
#8> But, our guy Joe knew that he is capable of learning fast and working his ass off if he was given the chance. Chance. Yes, he located the problem – employers do not want to give chances. You can't be expected to get a job by saying "I know my grades are bad but I can learn!" You can get a job by saying "I know my grades are bad but look at all these projects I finished that show I can produce." Don't blame the comp…
If you have projects that show you can produce, why waste your time with an employer? You used to be most vulnerable right out of college when you had to find an employer to take you. Now, with how difficult it is to find employment straight out of school, it becomes an easier choice to freelance, do your own startup, etc.
Re: Inexperienced doesn't mean stupid
#9"Last, but not least, how on Earth do they (employers) think that they can grow their company if they don’t train juniors? If you do not hire juniors, in ten years there won’t be any seniors left to hire." I think that this article has identified a serious risk here. Who is going to want to major in CS in the future if they know that the odds of getting an entry-level job in their field when they graduate are getting…
Are they getting worse and worse? I haven't seen anything to suggest that...
Unless you're extrapolating that because there are more CS majors, there are more potentially employees for a limited number of jobs. But considering that the world keeps needing more, and specialized software, the number of jobs is also growing.
Re: Inexperienced doesn't mean stupid
#10There's an element of a collective action problem going on: why train your employees when they will most likely be gone in 3 years or two years or six months? Even if you retain half of them, you're still spending time training the other half---training that will reap you no benefit, and may even end up helping your competitor.
People take better care of things they own, and higher employee mobility means that companies "own" their employees less than before. As such, investing in them just yields less return than it used to.
That doesn't mean I think we should go back to the bad old days of cradle-to-grave BigCo---rather, I think the author doesn't realize that's what drove the "good old days." Be careful what you wish for.
All that said, the author is correct in identifying the problem of a future shortage of senior developers.
But shortages are not a problem if you control the supply. Become a senior dev anyway, if on your own time. Learn to market yourself. If you think a shortage is coming, profit off of it by investing in yourself.