In an industry, glorified itself with automation, it is not really that hard to find out the automation first happens within itself.
Who Killed the Junior Developer?
201–210 of 803 posts
Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?
#202I 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…
This... has made me realize how lucky I am. I do get asked to mentor our junior people, and I also enjoy the look on people's faces when they get that sudden realization of how something works. And I like explaining how things work anyway; I find it's the second-best way to realize what pieces of the system -I- don't know. And - being perfectly honest about myself - I also enjoy the (brief and usually undeserved) "wo…
I've worked at 5 companies during my 13 years of programming and while I live in Eastern Europe and not North America, I can still confidently say luck has nothing to do with it.
Companies who work on long-term projects usually hire junior devs, companies that work on short therm projects don't, it's as easy as that.
Companies that hire more junior devs tend to pay less and usually struggle to keep the rising star devs that they helped train for the last 3 or so years.
It's just the way things are, I don't get the entitlemend of the article.
Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Well that sucks time to change the company...
Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
A key point that you're missing is that junior devs are likely to jump ship at least once in their career trajectory before they become senior devs. So yes, junior devs do need to be trained by someone , but if you're going to put in a lot of work and not receive much of the benefit, it's not in your best interest. There's a variety of reasons for why devs jump ship so often (including compensation), but unless you c…
Market rate compensation, non-toxic culture, and realistic expectations for work output solves 90% of the reasons reasonable people leave jobs. People claim all sorts of reasons for leaving jobs but its always one of those three or uncertainty about company longevity. (i.e. acquisition/financial difficulties for the company) The other 10% is people who are naive or have a family/relocation related issue that you can…
Most company doesn't work this way. They are not really toxic, it is just their internal policy structure.
Junior devs should look for jobs once they reach the 2 years mark any more, for their own good as well. They now know better what they want to do, more focused, more experienced, and most importantly, more valuable on the market.
Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?
#205Most junior level positions are being filled with the massive influx of new grads from really strong intern programs at most companies now. If you're in college now, make sure you get an internship at a company in your field. If it's too late for that, then you'll have to do a little extra work and probably work on a couple side projects and post them on GitHub. That first job will always be the hardest to get, so do…
This is 100% true in my experience as well. I hadn't thought of it before, but this seems like a major ethical problem for the industry -- from MegaCorp's perspective, internships are by far the best way to find junior talent, but access to internships is gated on being in a program at a top school with all the accumulated bias that implies.
I've seen some efforts at work along these lines, but nothing within even probably two orders of magnitude of the established internship program.
Curious if anyone is aware of companies offering entry level contract positions that aren't conditional on active enrollment in an academic program?
Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like the current trend of agile development process common in startups now somewhat works against senior devs' interests to mentor junior devs. There simply isn't time allocated for this. Senior devs are held accountable for what they deliver, and doing so on time. This is among other things like code reviewing PRs and attending meetings. For most senior devs working under this circumstance, the best they coul…
> I feel like the current trend of agile development process common in startups now somewhat works against senior devs' interests to mentor junior devs. There simply isn't time allocated for this. If you're a senior dev, you should be gaming the system a bit to create the time needed to fulfill your role. Never let the keeners fill your time up to 100%, unless it's truly neccessary. There's always going to be some in…
If the system has to be gamed to achieve the best results for your team then the system is flawed.
Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?
#207Most IT companies have not succeeded in having a technical growth path. So the 'new' acceptance is that technical people will just be with the company for a short time before moving on unless they 'mature' into management. With that comes the expectation that employees need to be productive from day 1. So there will be no 'investment' in training or mentoring.
Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?
#208The 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.
In many of the companies I worked for in the past, the word "senior" was also seen as an alternative to a pay raise.
One telco I worked for opted to change the title from developer to senior developer for five people in one year, this is on a 15 person team, where 4 people where already senior developers. The title change was seen as an alternative to a pay raise, equal in value.
Personally I don't care about titles and I prefer to just have the title of developer, and no "junior" or "senior" prefix. It's not helpful anyway, you just use the salary to compensate for the difference in skill levels.
Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?
#209Wait I see so many comments about how junior devs not being hired that much anymore. So is this really a bad time to consider software development as a career path if I have no degree or required formal training?
Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?
#210In an industry, glorified itself with automation, it is not really that hard to find out the automation first happens within itself.
There are always higher abstraction levels and new problem domains. If you lose your job to automation as a software dev, you've gotten complacent.
Put junior devs to work on the new stuff, not what you started on yourself.