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The Junior Hiring Crisis

people-work.io

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Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#11

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

carlosjobim wrote: post #9
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #2

That's a thoughtful post, but I am skeptical of how "universal" her suggested Path Forward is. I suspect a hell of a lot of folks will have difficulty with the "people skills" stuff she mentions (and is almost certainly highly conversant in, herself). > The most common answer from students when asked what they needed was a mentor who had just been in their shoes a few years ago, a surprising and heartening answer. Me…

> where we are taught to despise older folks 9 times out of 10 it goes the other way around. Most young people have only had very negative interactions with their seniors, which has been wholly on the part of the senior. The current young generation is very respectful towards older people.

> The current young generation is very respectful towards older people.

This has not been my experience.

I worked for a company that prized seniority, and I regularly dealt with folks older than me, more experienced than me, more capable than me, and willing to help me out. I worked there for almost 27 years, and it was awesome.

In my experience, I'm usually written off as an "OK Boomer," before I've even had a chance to open my mouth to prove it (or not).

My fave, is when we have a really promising text-only relationship, then, the minute they see me, it goes south.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#12

Post by avidiax »

This isn't the first time that the industry has foot-gunned itself.

The continued reliance on say, COBOL, and the complete lack of those developers comes to mind.

Even before LLMs, there were periods recently where multiple companies had "senior only" hiring policies. That just inflated what "senior" was until it was basically 5 years of experience.

This time seems a bit different, however. There are both supply and demand side problems. The supply of students it tainted with AI "learning" now. Colleges haven't realized that they absolutely have to effectively crack down on AI, or the signal of their degrees will wither to nothing. The demand side is also low, of course, since the candidates aren't good, and AI seems to be a good substitute for a newly graduated hire, especially if that hire is just going to use the AI badly.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#13

Post by dkdcio »

buellerbueller wrote: post #4

Want to stand out in a world where all the job applications are AI slop? Network. The original kind. Furthermore, this is why the humanities matter: because human relationships matter.

genuinely asking, how do you network to get a job? esp. if you’re a new grad

where do you network? what do you network with these other humans on?

I do think I could get a job from my network because I’ve worked in the industry for years and done good work; I’m a little skeptical of advice to network to junior/new grads. I at least ignore those LinkedIn requests

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#14

Post by hex4def6 »

> We used to have a training ground for junior engineers, but now AI is increasingly automating away that work. Both studies I referenced above cited the same thing - AI is getting good at automating junior work while only augmenting senior work. So the evidence doesn’t show that AI is going to replace everyone; it’s just removing the apprenticeship ladder.

Was having a discussion the other day with someone, and we came to the same conclusion. You used to be able to make yourself useful by doing the easy / annoying tasks that had to be done, but more senior people didn't want to waste time dealing with. In exchange you got on-the-job experience, until you were able to handle more complex tasks and grow your skill set. AI means that those 'easy' tasks can be automated away, so there's less immediate value in hiring a new grad.

I feel the effects of this are going to take a while to be felt (5 years?); mid-level -> senior-level transitions will leave a hole behind that can't be filled internally. It's almost like the aftermath of a war killing off 18-30 year olds leaving a demographic hole, or the effect of covid on education for certain age ranges.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#15

Post by carlosjobim »

pelagicAustral wrote: post #5
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #2

That's a thoughtful post, but I am skeptical of how "universal" her suggested Path Forward is. I suspect a hell of a lot of folks will have difficulty with the "people skills" stuff she mentions (and is almost certainly highly conversant in, herself). > The most common answer from students when asked what they needed was a mentor who had just been in their shoes a few years ago, a surprising and heartening answer. Me…

I think I would also ad to the mix that young folk these days are incredibly overconfident and averse to criticism. A few years back they got a junior dev in here, and I was supposed to help him get on our stack, and ultimately mentor him. This kid would not accept seniority, would constantly and publicly try to divert from the stack we worked with, he would not take any input on his work without actively fighting th…

> young folk these days

You should have stopped to think about why such a person was hired in the first place, while there are an endless supply of very talented, hard working, and honest young people who would never be given a chance at all.

But if I guess right, hiring is not seen as the responsibility of your company. And that's the core of the problem.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#16

Post by mooreds »

RicoElectrico wrote: post #3

The most frustrating thing about this whole junior position drought is how it simultaneously affects those who are passionate and get it , not only the opportunist bootcamp alumni who were lured by the prospect of high earnings. If I were to graduate today, I'd be royally screwed.

> If I were to graduate today, I'd be royally screwed.

I feel that too. I am a self-taught dev. Got a degree, but not in CS. I don't know if I could get hired today.

Not sure how to fix it; feels like the entire industry is eating the seed corn.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#17

Post by newcompscigrad »

After graduating with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science in December of 2024, my career path so far has been doing sex work and then a minimum wage job once I got finically stable enough to not do sex work, but my financial situation is precarious enough I still have to do sex work off and on when unexpected costs come up. I spent a few months applying to everything I could after getting my degree, but got nothing but automated rejections back if anything.

I didn't have the best networking skills to be fair, but I spent most of my college doing remote classes and didn't have much of a chance to network or whatever. I'm thinking about doing grad school so I can have another chance at developing some kind of network or make myself more attractive to employers. My grades were good and I genuinely enjoy computer science so spending half a year improving my portfolio sounds like a fun time. But going to grad school wouldn't really about getting employment, I just want to use my brain for something. Just working a job makes me feel completely insane, like I know that I can do so much more. I feel like I'm wasting the best years of my life and there's no place in this market where I can be useful. The only value I have is selling my body or being a human stand in for a robot at my "real" job.

Maybe this isn't the best place to post this. I have very little hope that I will ever get a job programming, and I'm just sad. What a waste of a life the past 5 years have been.

On a kind of funny note, I would say that doing sex work is genuinely less humiliating than applying to jobs as a new compsci grad. At least I have some signal that I have some value selling myself.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#18

Post by carlCarlCarlCar »

Maybe... that's fine?

We're not hiring a lot of rotary phone makers these days.

Who is hiring their own shoe-smith? It's been 30-ish years since my carpenter father last had work boots resoled.

It's almost as if... technology and economy evolve over time.

For all the arguments software people make about freedom to use their property as they see fit, they ignore non-programmers use of personal technology property is coupled to the opinions of programmers. Programmers ignore how they are middlemen of a sort they often deride as taking away the programmer's freedom! A very hypocritical group, them programmers.

What's so high tech about configuration of machines with lexical constructs as was the norm 60+ years ago? Seems a bit old fashioned.

Programmers are biology and biology has a tendency to be nostalgic, clingy, and self selecting. Which is all programmers are engaged in when they complain others won't need their skills.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#19

Post by 1970-01-01 »

CSSer wrote: post #7

This article talks a lot about AI, but what I find odd is that in my relatively short (but long enough) ~9 yr career so far, this problem predates AI. I don't deny that it exacerbates it, but you don't kill a disease by addressing the symptoms. From the first time I was ever involved in the hiring process, senior leadership always encouraged me to hire more experienced staff, always most heavily scrutinized juniors,…

Yes, AI isn't helping but the corporate world has been doing this for decades! Junior devs are second class citizens internally. I don't blame them for moving on after a few years.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#20

Post by frumplestlatz »

> Imagine a tech industry where relationship skills weren’t just nice-to-have but essential. Where navigating complex human systems was seen as a core competency.

If that were to actually happen, we'd wind up excluding many of our greatest technical performers while drowning in a sea of would-be middle managers. People skills matter, but so do many other strengths that don't always overlap with being naturally good at navigating interpersonal dynamics.

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