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The Junior Hiring Crisis

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Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#21

Post by rsaz »

dkdcio wrote: post #13
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

- share your work online (twitter used to be the far-and-away best place for getting eyes, but this is a bit less clear now. youtube can work well, maybe also tiktok or sites like medium?)

- go to events/conventions/join clubs related to programming (need to be located near a large city for this)

- talk to other students/self-learners and wait for them to get to the next step

I’ve been unemployed a long time and have been thinking of improving at networking. These are what I came up with.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#22

Post by constantcrying »

The idea that the only reasonable path into a software related career is through networking may be true, but it obviously signals something deeply wrong with the culture around work.

It is also something which is likely to be quite harmful, since it selects for people who are great at networking over people who have good technical skills. Obviously interpersonal communication is important, but how well a 20 year old in University performs at it should not doom or make their career.

And even people with bad social skills deserve to exist and should be allowed into their chosen career. Being someone who does good work and is respectful, but not overly social, should be good enough.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#23

Post by weatherlite »

hex4def6 wrote: post #14

> 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 c…

> I feel the effects of this are going to take a while to be felt (5 years?);

Who knows if we'll even need senior devs in 5 years. We'll see what happens. I think the role of software development will change so much those years of technical experience as a senior won't be so relevant but that's just my 5 cents.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#24

Post by j6m8 »

This is neat — I do think this is relevant to more than just the software engineering space. See also, healthcare and law (I wrote more at length here, not to derail this comment thread [1]). Our junior training on-ramps for a lot of knowledge-work fields are in some semblance of equilibrium, but it's an unstable one.

[1] https://blog.jordan.matelsky.com/AI-doctors-bum-me-out/

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#25

Post by AnimalMuppet »

dkdcio wrote: post #13
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

If you're a junior, develop connections with a few seniors.

If you're a senior, maintain relations with last year's graduating class (and with your placement services people).

If you get an internship, keep in touch with people there.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#26

Post by beginnings »

this is the end game of capitalism, where the greed driven pursuit of profit wins over social maintenance and development. we see it very clearly with the incredibly socially damaging mass immigration to replenish the slave class and maintain the mythical GDP growth, which is only "necessary" because the native slave classes have been squeezed out of breeding

new grads will be fed to the meat grinder with no regards, its a closed shop unless you know someone

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#27

Post by austin-cheney »

There are two problems here.

1. The industry cannot define the terms junior or senior.

2. Most seniors today are the prior generation’s juniors with almost no increase of capabilities, just more years on a resume.

The article asks about what happens when today’s seniors retire in the future. I would argue we are at that critical juncture now.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#29

Post by Justsignedup »

ge96 wrote: post #6
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.

/r/cscareerquestions the horror eg. applied to 2000 jobs got 1 offer

Honestly, with the AI slop of resumes, I applied to dozens of jobs, and only got a callback to ones I had either a recruiter for or direct connections to, after 20 years of experience. Because I didn't have a big fat "worked at google for 10 years" on my resume. And I'd like to think of myself as someone who can take a very bad situation and make it look smooth.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#30

Post by giancarlostoro »

weatherlite wrote: post #23
hex4def6 wrote: post #14

> 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 c…

> I feel the effects of this are going to take a while to be felt (5 years?); Who knows if we'll even need senior devs in 5 years. We'll see what happens. I think the role of software development will change so much those years of technical experience as a senior won't be so relevant but that's just my 5 cents.

The way I'm using claude code for personal projects, I feel like most devs will become moreso architects and testers of the output, and reviewers of the output. Which is good, plenty of us have said for ages, devs dont read code enough. Well now you get to read it. ;)

While the work seems to take similar amounts of time, I spend drastically less time fixing bugs, bugs that take me days or God forbid weeks, solved in minutes usually, sometimes maybe an hour if its obscure enough. You just have to feed the model enough context, full stack trace, every time.

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