Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Who Killed the Junior Developer?

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 803 posts

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#141

Post by preordained »

kilroy123 wrote: post #123
CryoLogic wrote: post #17

The growth of undergrand CS program enrollment is pretty insane, same with bootcamps. Lots of these people have no real interest in the positions outside of pay, which is fine for most careers. But in tech we put a lot of value on self learning and interest. I've definitely seen the number of new grad applicants and bootcamp grad applicants at least quadruple in the past few years. Most of these can make an Angular a…

People in my life have expressed interest in becoming developers and going to bootcamps, and such. I tell them, it's not really a job, it's more of a lifestyle. You need to love learning, tinkering, and hacking. Want to go to conferences and play around with pet projects. It's a forever evolving field.

I hear you on almost everything...I love tinkering, hacking, reading, pondering, side "experiments" (I think "project" is a bit grandiose for what I hack on from time to time)...but holy hell do I hate conferences and things like that. I just don't get it...most every conference I've seen could have been summed up in a quick article or powerpoint...and I don't get any personal thrills from the "live experience". That, and this is mine own super biased experience, every developer I met who was a conference nut was that guy who was obsessed with the "new shiny", who never seems to do any work that isn't greenfield and leaves others to deal with the fallout of various short-lived infatuations...yah, I'm not bitter, heh...but I'll be damned if these guys don't love their conferences;)

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#142

Post by banku_brougham »

Hire and develop the best: Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice.

edit: this is from the Amazon leadership principles

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#143

Post by lifeisstillgood »

This is one of those "each generation thinks it invented sex" issues - each company looks like it never trains internally, and we assume it's driven by reasons X (cheaper to not train anyone than train people and lose them)

my personal view is that most organisation structures are designed to prevent code quality and hence the reason to train anyone (senior or junior) is diminished.

My idealised view of a software dev org is a well defined code area owned by a single dev lead. that person has responsibility for certain metrics from "quality" to "performance" and "style" and some business kpis derived from the code area - and then stop measuring features produced to measuring how well those features are implemented.

sorry it's a bit early to get this clearer - will revisit in an hour just wanted a opinion

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#144

Post by JauntyHatAngle »

twblalock wrote: post #44
nathanaldensr wrote: post #6

I love mentoring. I always have. I used to help out other kids in my high school programming classes. Despite holding several high-level software development positions, what is the total number of times I've been asked by management to mentor more junior folks? Zero. I did it because I love sharing knowledge and I like seeing looks of understanding appear on my colleagues' faces when they "get something" for the firs…

> The short-termism that's infested our culture--it seems like all Western culture--is truly sickening. It feels like "Well, I got mine, screw the next generation." This goes way beyond just junior developers. It's a bit of a leap to conclude that on the basis that you weren't asked by management to mentor junior devs. In fact, it's possible management assumed you would do mentoring and didn't need to be told.

The impression I got was not that he was inferring that short-termism has infested culture due to the fact that he is no longer able to mentor junior devs.

I believe he was saying that short-termism (which his belief is everywhere and I assume he has this opinion based on external beliefs not listed here...) is the root cause of this. Not many people hire junior devs anymore.

I tend to agree with him, and believe it has a lot to do with the death of "lifers" in business.

The quickest way to progress a career nowadays is to jump every few years, and that applies to both management and tech people. If people do this, what incentive is there to properly mentor a junior developer? Train them up for them to get nabbed in a few years?

There is not much loyalty in both directions nowadays and that has some genuine downsides.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#145

Post by sidlls »

mlazos wrote: post #140
watwut wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code review is horrible way to teach. Especially with reviewers common in tech who just can't tell difference between differences of opinion and crappy code. Or difference between "how I would did it" and bad code.

I don’t agree with this at all. It’s up to the participants to argue their points and see who has more valid designs. I became a much much better programmer by learning from senior devs who review my code.

On the other hand it's possible for this to lead to senior developers who can't or won't leave their comfort zones entrenching designs and patterns that degrade the efficiency of the organization.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#146

Post by curun1r »

enra wrote: post #101
mooreds wrote: post #39

It is a tragedy of the commons scenario. Everyone wants senior devs, who were at one point junior devs. No one wants to train junior devs. The OP points out why: * cheaper to have juniorish work done overseas * juniorish work is automated away * juniors on a team slow it down (compared to a team of all seniors) So everyone competes for the senior talent. A more sophisticated long term analysis might look at the benef…

One reason I see especially in larger companies that there is specific hiring headcount allocated. Always it doesn’t specify if the allocation is for junior/mid/senior level. So to optimize your team’s output, you tend to look for the mid/senior and not even consider junior people.

This. If more managers were given a budget rather than a headcount, they'd hire more juniors. At my last managing gig, I was the only manager at my level to hire junior devs.

I prefer a little mentoring/supervision to the "too many chiefs" problem. And juniors have fewer bad habits I need to break, so I can more easily mold them into the kind of developer I want. Also, junior devs are much more willing to take the crap tasks that seniors find less challenging/interesting. I can stick a fresh college grad on bug duty and they'll often churn through them faster than the senior devs. The raw horsepower of some young devs is damn impressive just as long as you keep them pointed in the right direction.

But I've also found that mentoring is a rewarding part of the job and now that I manage, I really enjoy mentoring mentors. Helping turn great experienced devs into great teachers helps take them to the next level and I've had guys that didn't want to do anything but write code thank me for pushing them to mentor.

So yeah...lots of companies give their managers perverse incentives and allow them to be lazy. But if you're conscientious and put a plan in place, mixing in around 30-40% juniors can be cheaper, more productive and better for everyone involved. It's just harder and most managers are more interested in playing politics to increase the size of their fiefdom than they are in actually shipping software and thinking about their reports' careers.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#147

Post by Consultant32452 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #129
aerotwelve wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the answer, but they just won't listen. Management at so many firms have convinced themselves that developers leave because of all these magical reasons that aren't either 1) they're dissatisfied with their pay and you're not listening 2) they're dissatisfied with their working conditions (bullpens or open offices anyone?) so they'll never keep their best people and they'll never learn.

> This is the answer, but they just won't listen Is there a counterfactual? A company with a strong culture of promoting from within that outperforms as a likely result of this attribute?

In my experience promoting from within is still insufficient. Getting a promotion means maybe a 10% raise. Quitting means a 50-100% raise. I've got a guy on my team in a junior-ish position making 80 who is about to leave to make 160. There's no promotion path in the company to get that kind of raise over night.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#148

Post by ThrustVectoring »

ajmurmann wrote: post #105

Having recently had to do a lot of hiring and also played too much FIFA, I couldn't help but wonder if a argument couldn't be made for software engineering job contacts to work more like soccer player contracts. One issue is you might hire a junior dev, train them and just when they start to provide value BigCorp makes them an offer they can't refuse and you are left with the bill. If on the other hand the was a cont…

That is pretty ripe for abuse - junior developers take whatever since the first job is critically important to get, and then have zero negotiation power since it costs an exorbitant amount of money to "poach" them and pay them their fair market value.

I mean, yeah, it'd be good for employers. Not so much for employees. Likely an illegal or unenforceable contract, too.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#149

Post by ThrustVectoring »

perseusprime11 wrote: post #47

The word ’Junior’ killed the Junior Developer. Nobody wanted to have that title and it was also an easy target for recruiters to hire them away promising software developer roles.

Related: "Senior" developers with two years of experience.

There's just a hell of a lot of title inflation in general, I think.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#150

Post by trhway »

Junior devs are significant drain on senior devs resources which could otherwise be spent more productively. And once he or she matures a bit, he or she gets hired somewhere else as senior for double the money. Thus hiring seniors and not bothering with juniors have obvious business sense (until there is a way to bound juniors somehow - for example by immigration).
Post reply on HN