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The Junior Hiring Crisis

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Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#301

Post by ryandrake »

_keats wrote: post #249
daheza wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm getting AI generated product requirements that they haven't read themselves. It is so frustrating. Random requirements like "this service must have a response time of 5s or less" - "A retry mechanism must be present". We have a specific SLA already for response time and the designs don't have a retry mechanism built. The bad product managers have become 10x worse because they just generate AI garbage to spray at…

Wow, this describes _exactly_ what I've started to see from some PMs.

[dead]

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#302

Post by johnnyanmac »

watwut wrote: post #223
QuercusMax wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>not having preference between working on three parts of the system is not abnormal.

I suppose it depends on the team and industry. This would be unheard of behavior for games, for example. Why you taking a pay cut and likely working more hours to just say "I don't know, whatever works?". You'd ideally be working towards some sort of goal. Management, domain knowledge, just begin able to solve hard problems.

Welp, to each their own I suppose.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#303

Post by johnnyanmac »

ryandrake wrote: post #280
watwut wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yea a lot software developers I’ve worked with, across the full spectrum of skill levels, didn’t have a strong preference about what code they were writing. If there is a preference, it’s usually the parts they’ve already worked on, because they’re already ramped up. Strong desire to work on a specific piece of the code (or to not work on one) might even in some cases be a red flag.

Why would having an idea of where to direct their career be a red flag?

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#304

Post by ponector »

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?

I can understand such process for freshman, but for industry veteran with 10+ years of experience, with with recommendation from multiple senior managers?

And yet welcome to leetcode grind.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#305

Post by linsomniac »

kalinkochnev wrote: post #263
linsomniac wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>ridiculous hoops people are put through to get a job these days I'm sure that's true in some areas, but our last hire I was shocked at the ridiculous lengths the applications would go to to avoid putting in even a minimum effort to apply for the job. Like the Van Halen brown M&M test, we put a line in the middle of the job advert saying "If you've read this, put your favorite color in at the top of your job applicat…

As a new college grad I might be able to add some insight. We're stuck in a stalemate where the sheer volume of applications for employers to handle and applicants to send makes them take shortcuts, leaving both sides wonder why people aren't trying. If somebody has to send in 300-500 applications (which is not unheard of) and answer the same questions till they go blind, it's not surprising that certain things are m…

>Applicants don't have any reason to believe their info isn't thrown in the trash by an LLM as soon as it is sent.

That's leading to an escalation where because applicants believe their apps are just getting fed to the LLMs, employers have to use an LLM. ;-/

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#306

Post by QuercusMax »

ryandrake wrote: post #280
watwut wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yea a lot software developers I’ve worked with, across the full spectrum of skill levels, didn’t have a strong preference about what code they were writing. If there is a preference, it’s usually the parts they’ve already worked on, because they’re already ramped up. Strong desire to work on a specific piece of the code (or to not work on one) might even in some cases be a red flag.

What I'm talking about is like asking "do you want a turkey sandwich or a ham sandwich" and getting the response "I don't care" - about everything. Pick something! Make a choice! Take some ownership of the work you're doing!

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#307

Post by clintmcmahon »

What about hiring junior developers to do the work I don't want to spend time training AI to do? Humans retain context, over time learn the ins and outs of the business and will sit in a meeting with stakeholders to gain understanding of the business rules and ask the 'stupid' questions that need to be asked.

I would much rather have that junior take some hacks at building some features with AI along with my guidance than context switching over to AI just to walk it through doing a task which means having to explain the business and our business rules over and over again.

To me cutting out a junior developer adds more time for senior developers than making their work lighter.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#308

Post by samdoesnothing »

beginnings wrote: post #60

for anyone with children, dont waste their time with traditional school, that path is stone dead and is leading nowhere but the abyss of the permanent underclass apologise for inflicting this era on them and teach them to be entrepreneurial, teach them how to build, teach them rust on the backend, teach them postgres, teach them about assets maintaining value while money loses its tell them to never under any circums…

Crazy that you're getting downvoted. You're right about everything. Well, maybe about rust on the backend...

The world is fundamentally different than it was 50 years ago and the same boomer platitudes no longer make sense. We are going to suffer a global economic collapse in the near future (conveniently when the generations to blame are retired or dead) and it's going to reshape our world and what labor looks like.

I just hope that my generation will be kinder to future generations than the last.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#309

Post by nobodyandproud »

silexia wrote: post #110

A lot of this may be due to the recent far left changes in curriculum at many universities. A degree used to sort of a certificate an employer could rely upon that someone had basic skills. That is no longer the case. This makes older employees where the certificate was still reliable more attractive.

Irrelevant.

I went to a very bottom-tier school with a piss-poor reputation (but no debt!).

That didn’t stop me from getting employed, because employees were looking for workers when I started my employment journey.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#310

Post by ponector »

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.

People usually are not living good workplace, therefore there are many more open positions to the toxic teams than to the good ones.
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