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The Junior Hiring Crisis

people-work.io

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Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#221

Post by andrewrn »

To try and add in some anecdotes without injecting too much baggage:

I am an older gen-z and launching my career has felt nigh on impossible. At my first job, the allergy toward mentorship this article mentions was incredibly palpable. None of my several managers had management experience, and one of them openly told me they didn't want to be managing me. The one annual review I got was from someone who worked alongside me for a week.

Follow that experience up with a layoff and a literally futile job search, and its hard to be optimistic about building much of a career.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#222

Post by jpalomaki »

We have articles that are very skeptical about whether AI companies will ever make any money.

And then we have others claiming that AI is already having such a significant impact on hiring that the effects are clearly visible in the statistics.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#223

Post by watwut »

QuercusMax wrote: post #212
watwut wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not even sounds like a problem? Like when people are that picky about what exact personality the junior musr have that good work is not enough ... then there is something wrong with us.

When presenting the three projects, I gave pros and cons about each one, like "you'll get to learn this new piece of technology" or "a lot of people will be happy if we can get this working". Absolutely no reaction, just "I don't care, pick one". This guy claimed to want to get promoted to Senior, but didn't do anything Senior-shaped. If you're going to own a component of a system, I should be able to ask you intelli…

I am honestly totally fine with person like that. Sounds like someone easy to work with. I dunno, not having preference between working on three parts of the system is not abnormal. Most people choose randomly anyway.

Just pick the two you like the most.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#224

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jpalomaki wrote: post #222

We have articles that are very skeptical about whether AI companies will ever make any money. And then we have others claiming that AI is already having such a significant impact on hiring that the effects are clearly visible in the statistics.

Those two are not contradictory.

AI companies could never make any money (statement about the future, and about AI companies, and finances). And AI could be having a visible effect on hiring today (statement about now, and about non-AI companies, and about employment).

They don't have to both be true, but they do not inherently contradict each other.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#225

Post by tartoran »

izacus wrote: post #216
zcw100 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure have. Finance, research labs, government contracting. Can't wait for people to chime in with their horror stories. I've seen some of the most dysfunctional crap you can imagine.

You seem to have chosen the most toxic (and famous for it workplaces) and now you're misleadingly claiming that's the whole industry. It is not.

Toxicity is spread out and touching most of the industry. Is it fully toxic? Absolutely not. But I found some level of toxicity everywhere I worked for the past 20+ years in this industry.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#226

Post by illini1 »

jpalomaki wrote: post #222

We have articles that are very skeptical about whether AI companies will ever make any money. And then we have others claiming that AI is already having such a significant impact on hiring that the effects are clearly visible in the statistics.

Those two phenomena can be true at the same time.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#227

Post by lovich »

This is just a continuation of general labor practices in US companies.

I have been unable to get a tech job for months so I’ve looked into retraining in a new field and every single one has some up front large cost via either paying for schooling or situations like mechanics needing to bring their own tools.

The standard US company has completely shed all training costs and put the expectations on laborers to train themselves. And you’re shit out of luck if their requirements change during your training as so many college graduates who picked comp sci are currently learning

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#228

Post by gessha »

One thing that I hypothesize about junior developers is that you need to leapfrog the handholding period and go straight to the medium/senior position on your own. You can acquire the medium/senior level of knowledge and experience making all the mistakes and bad choices by yourself and learning from the experience.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#229

Post by dangus »

gessha wrote: post #228

One thing that I hypothesize about junior developers is that you need to leapfrog the handholding period and go straight to the medium/senior position on your own. You can acquire the medium/senior level of knowledge and experience making all the mistakes and bad choices by yourself and learning from the experience.

Are you saying this plan is realistic or more like a pipe dream?

This is kind of like saying “Get your flight hours in on Microsoft Flight Simulator and then Delta Airlines will hire you.”

All unpaid and in your spare time between your two minimum wage jobs, of course.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#230

Post by amarant »

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…

My hottest take on this is that it might be healthy for the business. During the recent boom everyone and their grandmother's dog got a job as software engineers, and some aren't really fit for it.

AI provides a bar. You need to be at least better than AI at coding to become a professional. It'll take genuine interest in the technology to surpass AI and clear that bar. The next generation of software professionals will be smaller, but unencumbered by incompetents. Their smaller number will be compensated by AI that can take care of the mundane tasks, and with any luck it's capabilities will only increase.

Surely I'm not the only one who's had colleagues with 10+years experience who can't manage to check out a new branch in git? We've been hiring people we shouldn't have hired.

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