As an unhired junior, I think this stems from a lack of unions and the ability of the workforce to make demands of capital (e.g. to prevent offshoring or discriminatory hiring processes)
The Junior Hiring Crisis
421–430 of 535 posts
Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis
#422I suspect this junior hiring crisis thing is linked to the ridiculous hoops people are put through to get a job these days. When I was starting, you were checked for potential as a trainee. In my case, options trading. They checked over that you could do some mental arithmetic, and that you had a superficial idea of what trading was about. Along with a degree from a fancy university, that was all that was needed. I d…
This is the replacement for credentialism, love it or hate it. You don't need a fancy school to get into a top firm anymore. You have to master the hell out of the interview.
no point mastering an interview you're never even invited to because you lack connections or can't get past the ATS.
Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis
#423I personally think - Juniors will be okay, if they stick to *fundamentals* lots of "seniors" via title inflation dont have fundamentals anyways - hence a lot of broken software in the wild & also perverse incentives like Resume driven development. A.I is built on badly written open source code. because once you have the fundamentals, built a few things - you would've battle scars which makes someone a senior not the…
Unfortunately short of making a startup or monetizing projects it’s hard to get paid purely from the fundamentals
Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis
#424I suspect this junior hiring crisis thing is linked to the ridiculous hoops people are put through to get a job these days. When I was starting, you were checked for potential as a trainee. In my case, options trading. They checked over that you could do some mental arithmetic, and that you had a superficial idea of what trading was about. Along with a degree from a fancy university, that was all that was needed. I d…
Currently, it is not just juniors. It is people of all seniorities, who have to jump through ridiculous hoops, to be believed, that they are any good. Built most of the software of a company where I worked for 7y from humble beginnings to >80 people. Still gotta line up for a 4h on-site assessment! Built tons of free time projects, some more complex than anything one would usually build on the job. Still gotta have l…
I'd say that "normal" (notjunior, not senior) level people have the hardest time ATM. Most jobs are either for juniors or seniors, not inbetween (anecdotal data from my experience job hunting for the last year in austria)
Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis
#425I suspect this junior hiring crisis thing is linked to the ridiculous hoops people are put through to get a job these days. When I was starting, you were checked for potential as a trainee. In my case, options trading. They checked over that you could do some mental arithmetic, and that you had a superficial idea of what trading was about. Along with a degree from a fancy university, that was all that was needed. I d…
>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…
> 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 application message.
TBH I can't blame them. you're applying to hundreds of applications repetitively with qualifications that barely matter because you're encouraged to apply anyway. You can only spend so many hours reading HR-drivel (that at this point may or may not be ai-generated) before you focus on just finding "job title, salary , location), and then slamming apply. It's just not worth editing my resume to add some weird qualifier if I don't even think I'm going to get a reply. It's another hoop.
It's the complete inverse of hosting Van Helen at your show. It'd be more like trying to make a cashier recite their company motto. They are not that dedicated to any one role. They can't afford to be.
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I don't know if it's feasible for your situation, but smaller teams tend to have candidates email their resume. It can still be LLM'd, but I will tend to pay more attention if I feel like I have a direct communication channel. Not yet another greenhouse application form. It leaves room to be more free form with my pitch as well.
Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has been a thing for a long time and I've thought about it quite a bit, but I still have no solutions. I'm pretty sure it just comes down to bean-counting: "we have a new fulltime permanent asset for $100k" vs "we have a new fulltime permanent asset for $120k" is effectively the same thing, and there's a clear "spend money, acquire person" transaction going on. Meanwhile, "we spent $20k on an asset we already ha…
In my view, I have observed many good, underpaid engineers because they choose stability over higher pay. Most people are happy with slow and stead pay rises while working at the same company. Companies know this and pay accordingly. Only your top 1-10% of employees need more careful "TLC" to give higher raises and regular off-cycle feedback: "You're doing great. We are giving you a special raise for your efforts." Y…
This. Accepting bad terms become a problem after a while, non-solidarity with the profession.
Employers get straight up lazy, by having soft negotiating employees to ignore. This laziness will bite them.
Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I was told I'd get less of this as I got real experience. More additions to the pile of lies and misconceptions. If you need to fizzbuzz me, fine. But why am I still making word search solver project in my free time as if I'm applying for a college internship?
I’ve started using ChatGPT for their take home projects, with only minor edits or refactors myself. If they’re upset I saved a couple hours of tedium, they’re the wrong employer for me. And I’m being an accelerationist hoping the whole thing collapses under its own ridiculousness.
Also they explicitly say to not use AI assistance for such assignments.
Recruitment is broken even more than before chatgpt.
Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis
#428It's not obvious to me that AI is the reason for the hiring slowdown. ChatGPT was pretty useless when it first released. It was neat that you could talk to it but I don't think it actually became a tool you could depend on (and even then, in a very limited way) until sometime in 2024. Basically: - the junior hiring slowdown started in 2022. - but LLM's have only really been useful in a work context starting around 20…
No one wants to say we're in a recession yet, so we gotta deal with beating around the bush for another few years.
But yeah, it's bad in general. seniors are struggling too. This was cooking for even longer, but more mess got added to the stack.
Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 has been a thing for a long time and I've thought about it quite a bit, but I still have no solutions. I'm pretty sure it just comes down to bean-counting: "we have a new fulltime permanent asset for $100k" vs "we have a new fulltime permanent asset for $120k" is effectively the same thing, and there's a clear "spend money, acquire person" transaction going on. Meanwhile, "we spent $20k on an asset we already ha…
"What are you buying with those 20k?"
You keep a good thing going, you buy oil for the machinery, you keep your part of the bargain and do the maintenance. You pay the correct price for the stuff you are lucky enough to have been getting on the cheap.
I like the directness of the question: "Why should I pay more when it won't burn down right this instand if I don't?" This is a question asked all over, and it is dangerous, keeping anything going requires maintenance and knowledge in how to maintain it. That goes for cars and it goes for people.
This is not business, it is miserly behaviour, it is being cheap.
The miser will find himself in a harsh, transactional, brutal world. Because that is the only way for people to protect themselves against him.
Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
One would assume the solution is to simply offer a good package and retain employees with that. I returned to an old company after a few years of floating around because I realized they had the perfect mix of culture and benefits for me, even if the pay isn't massive. You're falling for the exact same fallacy experienced by failed salesmen. "Why would I bother investing time in this customer when they're just going t…
The game theory here says that such a company will be outcompeted and killed by a company which doesn't spend money+time on retention and training but instead invests that money in poaching. What you say only works if everyone is doing it. But if you're spending resources on juniors and raises, you can easily be outcompeted and outpoached by companies using that saved money to poach your best employees.
Its the tragedy of the commons. These companies will think they are very smart for doing this, but theyll just foster a culture where there are no competent employees once the current seniors retire