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The Junior Hiring Crisis

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Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#341

Post by lingrush4 »

Octoth0rpe wrote: post #56

> The social contract between large companies and employees has been broken for years now. US companies are optimized for quarterly earnings, not long term investment in their employees. Going to throw out another anecdote here. At a company that a number of my friends work for (a fortune 50), they are currently making record profits that they loudly brag about during employee townhalls. They also are in the process…

Any CEO that retains underperforming teams just because the overall company is doing well is a fool.

If you want to avoid getting laid off, make sure the product of your work is more valuable than your salary.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#342

Post by anal_reactor »

shagie wrote: post #296
anal_reactor wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is especially annoying when you get back a response in a PR "Yes, you're right. I have pushed the fixes you suggested." I've learnt that saying this exact phrase does wonders when it comes to advancing your career. I used to argue against stupid ideas but not only did I achieve nothing, but I was also labelled uncooperative and technically incompetent. Then I became a "yes-man" and all problems went away.

I was attempting to mock Claude's "You are absolutely right" style of response when corrected. I have seen responses to PRs that appear to be a copy and paste of my feedback into it and a copy and paste of the response and fixes into the PR. It may be the that the developer is incorporating the mannerisms of Claude into their own speech... that would be something to delve into (that was intentional). However, more of…

> However, more often than not in today's world of software development such responses are more likely to indicate a copy and paste of LLM generated content.

This is nothing new. People rarely have independent thoughts, usually they just parrot whatever they've been told to parrot. LLMs created common world-wide standard on this parroting, which makes the phenomenon more evident, but it doesn't change the fact that it existed before LLMs.

Have you ever had a conversation with an intelligent person and thought "wow that's refreshing"? Yeah. There's a reason why it feels so good.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#343

Post by johnnyanmac »

Octoth0rpe wrote: post #56

> The social contract between large companies and employees has been broken for years now. US companies are optimized for quarterly earnings, not long term investment in their employees. Going to throw out another anecdote here. At a company that a number of my friends work for (a fortune 50), they are currently making record profits that they loudly brag about during employee townhalls. They also are in the process…

> This is not the only company that I know of acting in this way

At this point in the tech industry, it'd be easier to name companies not doing this. Maybe Apple? I think they got aroudn it by not renewing contractors. But I might have missed something.

>To me the societal risk is that an entire generation of employees becomes extremely jaded and unmotivated, and fairly so.

I sure am jaded. But more motivated than now in my goals. They used to be to be this knowledgeable IC who can dig deep into a domain, but it's definitely been shifting to being able to sustain myself off my talents. I'll grab short term contracts and let my own products be the steady income.

(yeah, a lot easier said than done. But I have time to prepare for that).

>Who can really blame people for putting in minimal effort when they have so much evidence that it will not be rewarded?

Worse than that. Why put in effort when your reward for providing all that value is still getting the axe?

My industry is finally starting to see real moves at unionizing, but I hope tech as a whole is starting to wake up to this fact?

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#344

Post by smiley1437 »

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…

> mid-level -> senior-level transitions will leave a hole behind that can't be filled internally.

Tech companies are betting that in 5 years, AI should be good enough to replace mid-levels.

Rinse and repeat with seniors 5 years after that.

Hard to say if that bet will pay off, or what the endgame would be; just the CEO commanding an company of AIs?

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#345

Post by johnnyanmac »

lingrush4 wrote: post #341
Octoth0rpe wrote: post #56

> The social contract between large companies and employees has been broken for years now. US companies are optimized for quarterly earnings, not long term investment in their employees. Going to throw out another anecdote here. At a company that a number of my friends work for (a fortune 50), they are currently making record profits that they loudly brag about during employee townhalls. They also are in the process…

Any CEO that retains underperforming teams just because the overall company is doing well is a fool. If you want to avoid getting laid off, make sure the product of your work is more valuable than your salary.

It's more like "this product is underperforming, let go of the team". Regardless of the reasons the product is underperforming. Could be that it was still in development and money dried, could be that they want to pull out of a region and need a product as an excuse.

You can't outwork corporate greed, unless you're working for peanuts in a 3rd world country. Then you're truly irreplacable (and still broke).

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#346

Post by zcw100 »

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.

Nice attitude. Thank you for proving my point. If someone works in a toxic environment it must be their fault for "choosing it".

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#347

Post by CyberDildonics »

jmyeet wrote: post #217
CyberDildonics wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really saying the production turn around time of a multi-camera sitcom compared to full on movie quality TV shows is due to more writers?

There are multiple factors. For example, the death of optical media has had a massive impact on the entertainment industry, particularly movies. Matt Damon has spoken about this, on Hot Wings of all places [1]. Streaming began as a alternate path for monetizing old content other than cable TV syndication. And it was excelelnt for this in the early years. At that time it was bonus income. But streaming also ushered in…

This doesn't have anything to do with my reply. You're equating what is essentially a play in a warehouse with million dollar per minute productions that have the quality of summer movies.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#348

Post by johnnyanmac »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #201
Octoth0rpe wrote: post #56

> The social contract between large companies and employees has been broken for years now. US companies are optimized for quarterly earnings, not long term investment in their employees. Going to throw out another anecdote here. At a company that a number of my friends work for (a fortune 50), they are currently making record profits that they loudly brag about during employee townhalls. They also are in the process…

Those of us familiar with the Dilbert comic strip of the '90s-'00s are having a good chuckle at the idea that there was ever a social contract. What you think of as a social contract was a fiction enabled only by the explosive growth of the software industry during the Internet and mobile web of the last twenty years. It's easy to be generous to employees when the profits just keep growing on their own. It's easy to…

>It's easy to overlook mediocrity (and sub-mediocrity) when as many warm bodies are possible are needed to fulfill business objectives.

dismissing technical talent as "warm bodies" is exactly how the old guard of IBM/AT&T/Oracle fell to the new scrappy talent. I'm sure history will repeat itself again in due time.

> We'll be navigating an employment environment much like what the norm is in other technical professions with tougher standards and fiercer competition for good jobs.

if every other sector except healthcare wasn't experiencing the same thing, you may have a point. This clearly isn't a problem limited to tech, though.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#349

Post by johnnyanmac »

samiwami wrote: post #265
timoth3y wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of this has to do with the explosion of CEO (and by extension CxO) pay over the past 30 years. Today, a CEO can turn in a few quarters of really solid earnings growth, they can earn enough to retire to a life a private jets. Back when CxO pay was lower, the only way to make that kind of bank was to claw your way into the top job and stay there for a decade or more. The current situation strongly incenti…

CEO’s also never face consequences for destroying companies. Zaslav has run WBD into the ground and it’s currently being surrounded by vultures, and he’s still making like half a billion a year.

I wish I could find the article about it that I read a few years back. But CEOS needs skin in the game again. the incentives are all broken. running a good business doesn't matter anymore (at least in the US).

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#350

Post by icedchai »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #332
icedchai wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the value isn't there. I'm on a very lopsided team, about 5 juniors to 1 senior. Almost all of the senior time is being consumed in "mentorship", mostly slogging through AI slop laden code reviews. There have been improvements, but it's taking a long time.

Have you considered regulting AI use, or is it just easier to be mad at the workers and do nothing?

Yes, we are working on some guidelines, but there are layers of bureaucracy...
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