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The Junior Hiring Crisis

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Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#281

Post by xboxnolifes »

alephnerd wrote: post #31

Sadly - as I've mentioned on HN a bunch - junior salaries need to fall dramatically to somewhere in the $60k-$100k range in order to make it cost effective against automation/AI or offshoring. The economics of providing every new grad a $150k TC offer just doesn't work in a world with the dual pressures of AI and async induced offshoring. Heck, once you factor in YoE, salaries and TCs outside the new grad range have…

Fall into the 60-100k range? Thats where the vast majority of them have been. Only the bay and NYC city area sees otherwise, and even in those areas I see plenty of listing for 90-110k for junior positions.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#282

Post by antonvs »

Tade0 wrote: post #101
aynyc wrote: post #78

I'm gonna get some downvote, but I'll say this. Over the last 10 years, the quality of the juniors trends opposite of salary curve. We don't have a crazy interview process, nor are we working on anything ground breaking. By any measurement, we are a run of the mill company that don't offer top end salary but market competitive. The quality of junior engineers I've interviewed has been abysmal. Maybe because we don't…

> The quality of junior engineers I've interviewed has been abysmal. Maybe because we don't have the name nor the high end salary, or maybe our recruiting firms and HR suck in general. My hire/no-hire ratio is literally 50:1. I'm sorry but to me this part reads like a humorous phrase that's popular in some circles in my region which goes: "Maybe , but at least " The companies I worked for used automated coding quizze…

> How is them knowing when binary search is useful relevant to what they'll be doing at work should they get hired?

Because it goes directly to their understanding rather than whatever rote memorization they’ve done. Anything that involves rote memorization can be done, better, by LLMs. What’s in short supply are people with good critical thinking skills and the ability to deal effectively with new problems.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#283

Post by throwaway2037 »

andrewmutz wrote: post #136
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…

It's not helping that in the last 10 years a culture of job-hopping has taken over the tech industry. Average tenure at tech companies is often ~2 years and after that people job hop to increase compensation. It's clear why people do it (more pay) but it sets up bad incentives for the companies. Why would a company invest money in growing the technical skill set of an employee, just to have them leave as soon as they…

    > culture of job-hopping
When using this phrase in this context, is your sentiment positive or negative? In my experience, each time I have a job offer for more money, I go and talk to my current line manager. I explain the new job offer, and ask if they would like to counteroffer. 100% (simultaneously emotionally hurt ("oh, he's disloyal for leaving") and unsupportive of matching compensation. In almost all cases, an external recruiter found me online, reached out, and had a great new opportunity that paid well. Who am I to look away? I'm nothing special as a technologist, but please don't fault me for accepting great opportunities with higher pay.

    > Why would a company invest money in growing the technical skill set of an employee
What exactly is meant by "invest" here? In my career, my employers haven't done shit for me about training. Yet, 100% of them expect me to be up-to-date all the time on whatever technology they fancy this week. Is tech training really a thing in 2025 with so many great online resources? In my career, I am 100% self-trained, usually through blogs, technical papers, mailing lists, and discussions with peers.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#284

Post by ah979 »

Madmallard wrote: post #250

This is entirely due to sociopaths that stole trillions in assets from the general population then bought out law makers to not outlaw their blatant copyright infringement so they can make themselves richer with some self-proclaimed 'noble' aim. The general population is being rapidly sacked as a 'necessary' expense of criminal elites. No one should be happy about this.

Yes, and that.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#285

Post by alephnerd »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #281
alephnerd wrote: post #31

Sadly - as I've mentioned on HN a bunch - junior salaries need to fall dramatically to somewhere in the $60k-$100k range in order to make it cost effective against automation/AI or offshoring. The economics of providing every new grad a $150k TC offer just doesn't work in a world with the dual pressures of AI and async induced offshoring. Heck, once you factor in YoE, salaries and TCs outside the new grad range have…

Fall into the 60-100k range? Thats where the vast majority of them have been. Only the bay and NYC city area sees otherwise, and even in those areas I see plenty of listing for 90-110k for junior positions.

> Thats where the vast majority of them have been. Only the bay and NYC city area...

The majority of tech jobs are consolidated in the 3 primary tech hubs - the Bay, Seattle, and NYC.

A $110k new grad position in the Bay would end up becoming around a $130k-$150k TC offer, which lands at the median [0] for entry level SWE roles in the US.

Basically, median TC would need to shift to the 25th percentile as it exists in the US today [0], or shift to the level that they are at the 75th percentile in Canada [1] and the United Kingdom [2], both have which has taken advantage of the differential to a certain extent as well as offering subsidizes to attract FDI from American tech companies.

When an American entry level SWE salary 25th percentile ends up being the equivalent of the 75th percentile of both Canadian and British entry level SWE salaries, something is very wrong given that both countries have similar CoL to the US.

But sadly, in your specific case, based on your resume I think it would be difficult for someone like me to justify hiring you without references or a personal connection (which a lot of people are leveraging, which truly sucks for most new grads). My two cents to you is you may need to consider relocating to a tech hub, even if you are taking a cut compared to where you live or commuting to one even if you have to take a hellish multi-hour commute to the office 2-3 days a week.

[0] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/levels/entry-leve...

[1] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/levels/entry-leve...

[2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/levels/entry-leve...

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#286

Post by [deleted] »

twosdai wrote: post #199
zingar wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mind giving some examples of the work that annoys seniors?

Writing unit tests, manual validation work, manual testing. Automating Deployments of infrastructure, DNS work, tracking down annoying one off bugs, fixing and validating dependency issues. Basically this type of maintenance work for any sufficiently complex codebase. (Over 20k LOC) When I was an QA intern / Software Dev Intern. I did all of that junk.

[deleted]

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#287

Post by venturecruelty »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #264
shagie wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now I just assume they're taking my feedback and feeding it right back to the LLM. This is especially annoying when you get back a response in a PR "Yes, you're right. I have pushed the fixes you suggested." Part of the challenge (and I don't have an answer either) is there are some juniors who use AI to assist... and some who use it to delegate all of their work to. It is especially frustrating that the second gro…

I must ask once again why we are having these 5+ round interview cycles and we aren't able to filter for qualities that the work requires of its talent. What are all those rounds for if we're getting engineers who aren't as valued for the team's needs at the end of the pipeline?

It's the cargo cult kayfabe of it all. People do it because Google used to do it, now it's just spread like a folk religion. But nobody wants guilds or licensure, so we have to make everyone do a week-long take-home and then FizzBuzz in front of a very awkward committee. Might as well just read chicken bones, at least that would be less humiliating.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#288

Post by throwaway2037 »

ike2792 wrote: post #174
andrewmutz wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not helping that in the last 10 years a culture of job-hopping has taken over the tech industry. Average tenure at tech companies is often ~2 years and after that people job hop to increase compensation. It's clear why people do it (more pay) but it sets up bad incentives for the companies. Why would a company invest money in growing the technical skill set of an employee, just to have them leave as soon as they…

When I'm hiring an engineer, HR will easily let me bump up the offer by $10-20K if the candidate counters. It is nearly impossible to get that same $10-20K bump for an existing engineer that is performing extremely well. Companies themselves set up this perverse incentive structure.

This! Each time I join a new job, about 1-3 months in the door, there is a sit-down with the new line manager to check-in and give some feedback. I always talk about future compensation expectations at the time. I tell them: The market pays approximately 4-5% increase in total comp per year. That means, up 20% every 4 years. That is my expectation. If they current company is not paying that rate, I will look elsewhere for work. In almost all cases, they nod their heads in agreement. Ironically, when I come to them 3-5 years later with a new job offer in hand with a nice pay raise, 100% of them do not support matching the compensation, and view me as an un-loyal "job hopper". You just can't win with middle managers.

This is why I never do internal job transfers. The total comp doesn't change. If I do an external job change, I will get a pay rise. I say it to my peers in private: "Loyalty is for suckers; you get paid less."

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#289

Post by chihuahua »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #274
icedchai wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some definite signs of over reliance on AI. From emojis in comments, to updates completely unrelated to the task at hand, if you ask "why did you make this change?", you'll typically get no answer. I don't mind if AI is used as a tool, but the output needs to be vetted.

What is wrong with emojis in comments? I see no issue with it. Do I do it myself? No. Would I pushback if a young person added emojis to comments? No. I am looking at "the content, not the colour".

I think GP may be thinking that emojis in PR comments (plus the other red flags they mentioned) are the result of copy/paste from LLM output, which might imply that the person who does mindless copy/pasting is not adding anything and could be replaced by LLM automation.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#290

Post by transfer92 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #271
supriyo-biswas wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dealing with an intern at work who I suspect is doing exactly this, I discussed this with a colleague. One way seems to be to organize a face to face meeting where you test their problem solving skills without AI use, the other may be to question them about their thought process as you review a PR. Unfortunately, the use of LLMs has brought about a lot of mistrust in the workplace. Earlier you’d simply assume that a…

> Earlier you’d simply assume that a junior making mistakes is simply part of being a junior and can be coached; whereas nowadays said junior may not be willing to take your advice Hot take: This reads like an old person looking down upon young people. Can you explain why it isn't? Else, this reads like: "When I was young, we worked hard and listened to our elders. These days, young people ignore our advice." Every t…

> I can assure you that when I was young, I did not listen to older people's advice and I tried to do everything my own way.

Hot take: This reads like a person who was difficult to work with.

Senior people have responsibility, therefore in a business situation they have authority. Junior people who think they know it all don't like this. If there's a disagreement between a senior person and a junior person about something, they should, of course, listen to each other respectfully. If that's not happening, then one of them is not being a good employee. But if they are, then the supervisor makes the final call.

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