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What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

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Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#151

Post by boothby »

tetromino_ wrote: post #105
esalman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is absolutely directly responsible. Managers are literally asking whether people need AI credits or interns over summer. Most people are taking credits, and internships are getting cancelled left and right.

> Managers are literally asking whether people need AI credits or interns over summer That's a bit like asking them to choose between AI credits and a visit to the dentist. No engineer has ever hosted an intern in the hopes of improving their project's velocity; people host interns because "it's the right thing to do" for the industry, because it's psychologically satisfying for many people, and to build cred and/or…

Where I work, interns are hired to work on projects that a senior person could do and failure won't wreck us. And your last sentence is where we see the real payoff: the bright ones come back and become valued team members.

Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#152

Post by tdeck »

nickff wrote: post #45
kxrm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also doesn't really sit well with what I have observed in over 25 years of working for remote companies. We hired juniors and grew engineers up just fine. The problem, at least at orgs I have worked at in the last decade, is companies no longer want to invest in junior hires. I have been fortunate to have a C-level above me, who believes in hiring juniors, take over in the last year. We are hiring now and mentorin…

People job hopping when they get past 'junior' status is what seems to have caused the reluctance to hire juniors, especially combined with the surge of 'opportunists' who started getting comp-sci degrees when it became obvious that it was the easiest way to earn a comfortable living. The job-hoppers made it obvious that it was just cheaper and faster to hire intermediate and senior developers (rather than investing…

Very few industries have an interview process that's as painful and time-consuming as the software industry. If people are "job-hopping", perhaps it's because they're dramatically undervalued by their employer. I left my first job for a 30% raise, despite really liking my colleagues and leaving behind a bunch of institutional and systems knowledge and starting with a blank slate.

Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#153

Post by busterarm »

madrox wrote: post #114

I worked at a fully remote company that did the best job hiring juniors in my 20 year career. The talent and enthusiasm in that pool was great and really injected something into teams. What changed was ZIRP ending. The layoffs from that were real, and the managers who can't hire a ton angle for more senior people instead. The junior culture changed overnight.

We ended our intern program and so did a ton of other companies.

IMO one of the worst decisions we've ever made because 80% of the time the interns we take on and then hire are absolute superstars.

And even before we ended it we had a couple of years where we stopped competing for talent from Waterloo. I guess Trump made that harder but yeah bad decisions all around.

Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#154

Post by dpark »

madrox wrote: post #114

I worked at a fully remote company that did the best job hiring juniors in my 20 year career. The talent and enthusiasm in that pool was great and really injected something into teams. What changed was ZIRP ending. The layoffs from that were real, and the managers who can't hire a ton angle for more senior people instead. The junior culture changed overnight.

> the managers who can't hire a ton angle for more senior people instead

This is a huge factor. I’ve seen teams admit that they are too “senior heavy” and then still hire senior engineers over junior when the rare position opens up.

I’ve also seen teams cut college hiring and internships because head count is tight and they don’t expect positions to open up.

Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#155

Post by wombatpm »

mc3301 wrote: post #148
jdlyga wrote: post #143

The trouble with hiring juniors now is it's much more difficult to get them up to speed so they can be productive. Before covid, you'd sit next to them, get asked questions every so often, do some pair programming, and discuss ideas over lunch. You can, on paper, do the same exact things over Slack and Zoom. But there's much more friction. And a junior that's struggling is a lot less visible than it used to be. So wh…

Fully agree. I'm all for remote work. However, in my first 2 years of programming, being able to go the the office, put my laptop and notebook down next to a senior dev, point and say, "Help me," was so valuable.

Screen share on slack or teams gives you the same. I’d routinely work with remote teammates that way, and we’d jump in a control each others machines as needed. We’d do hours of that as a team, breaking into breakout rooms as necessary. Much more effective that a hot conference room

Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#156

Post by busterarm »

andix wrote: post #39
NeutralCrane wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In contrast, when I worked in office, I found these fabled “lunches with the guy in accounts or the women in the sales team” didn’t ever happen. A lot of the mythical spontaneous collaboration that supposedly happens in office seems to be just that: a myth. At least for many.

I think only a few people manage to build such a network inside a company. But those are usually the successful ones, because they know much more than others.

It's not super hard. You just have to listen to when people are asking for things, try to help and read an org chart.

90% of the engineers I've worked with in bigger companies wouldn't know how to find someone in the company outside of their direct reporting structure.

Honestly it's pathetic. The rest of the organization can't work like that and these are table stakes social skills IMO.

I seriously think the "headphones on, get into flow" trope is the most damaging meme in our industry. Management also takes huge advantage of the low-information environment that engineers seem comfortable in. Most of them don't even (really) know what our product is or how it's sold and marketed.

Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#157

Post by jolmg »

wombatpm wrote: post #155
mc3301 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agree. I'm all for remote work. However, in my first 2 years of programming, being able to go the the office, put my laptop and notebook down next to a senior dev, point and say, "Help me," was so valuable.

Screen share on slack or teams gives you the same. I’d routinely work with remote teammates that way, and we’d jump in a control each others machines as needed. We’d do hours of that as a team, breaking into breakout rooms as necessary. Much more effective that a hot conference room

Even simply taking pictures of one's monitor and sending them along with text/whatsapp messages can be surprisingly practical, low friction, and effective. Adds the benefit of being asynchronous collaboration.

Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#158

Post by c0rruptbytes »

mc3301 wrote: post #148
jdlyga wrote: post #143

The trouble with hiring juniors now is it's much more difficult to get them up to speed so they can be productive. Before covid, you'd sit next to them, get asked questions every so often, do some pair programming, and discuss ideas over lunch. You can, on paper, do the same exact things over Slack and Zoom. But there's much more friction. And a junior that's struggling is a lot less visible than it used to be. So wh…

Fully agree. I'm all for remote work. However, in my first 2 years of programming, being able to go the the office, put my laptop and notebook down next to a senior dev, point and say, "Help me," was so valuable.

seems more like a culture problem, i have my calendar very public, all my junior devs know ill get on a zoom with no hesitation and they actually seem to enjoy the screen sharing, every zoom is recorded with AI summary/transcript so they’re more focused on asking questions instead of taking notes (and i think they’re really solid juniors and actually go back and watch)

there’s the whiteboard element but i’ve gotten pretty good at exalidraw and zoom annotating

add in the remote makes it kinda easy to not be distracting in meetings so i can easily DM them context on the side to get them ramped up easier

Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#159

Post by cbdevidal »

mc3301 wrote: post #148
jdlyga wrote: post #143

The trouble with hiring juniors now is it's much more difficult to get them up to speed so they can be productive. Before covid, you'd sit next to them, get asked questions every so often, do some pair programming, and discuss ideas over lunch. You can, on paper, do the same exact things over Slack and Zoom. But there's much more friction. And a junior that's struggling is a lot less visible than it used to be. So wh…

Fully agree. I'm all for remote work. However, in my first 2 years of programming, being able to go the the office, put my laptop and notebook down next to a senior dev, point and say, "Help me," was so valuable.

I’ve never known the joy of sitting with someone more experienced to ask for help; I’ve either always been the most knowledgeable in the room (which is not necessarily saying much) or I was the only one in the room.

With AI coding agents, I finally feel like I can tap the shoulder of a pro for help.

It’s not the absolute expert, and I know it’ll make mistakes. But much more knowledgeable than me at certain technologies and techniques.

Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#160

Post by ariwilson »

c0rruptbytes wrote: post #158
mc3301 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agree. I'm all for remote work. However, in my first 2 years of programming, being able to go the the office, put my laptop and notebook down next to a senior dev, point and say, "Help me," was so valuable.

seems more like a culture problem, i have my calendar very public, all my junior devs know ill get on a zoom with no hesitation and they actually seem to enjoy the screen sharing, every zoom is recorded with AI summary/transcript so they’re more focused on asking questions instead of taking notes (and i think they’re really solid juniors and actually go back and watch) there’s the whiteboard element but i’ve gotten p…

zoom settings fucking suck to set up full AI summary / transcript btw. i know it's a one time cost but it's across every engineer
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