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The Junior Hiring Crisis

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Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#431

Post by johnnyanmac »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #378
ilc wrote: post #97

I think AI clouds the real issues around Junior hiring. Defective companies. Let's say you hire your great new engineer. Ok, great! Now their value is going to escalate RAPIDLY over the next 2-3 years. And by rapidly, it could be 50-100%. Because someone else will pay that to NOT train a person fresh out of college! What company hands out raises aggressively enough to stay ahead of that truth? None of them, maybe a M…

I think this is the crux of it. When i got my first job I probably made half the salary of the senior engineer in our division. I am 100% sure I was not half as productive. Juniors take a lot of training and time and aren't very productive, but their salaries are actually not reflective of that. The first few months at your first job you're probably a net loss in productivity. If salaries reflected productivity, you'…

>Even if you give aggressive raises, at the next interview they can fake/inflate their experience and jump in to a higher salary bracket

I don't think the kinds of people who see a 50% raise and complain that it's not 100% are the kinds of candidates you want to hire anyway. I'd like to see more of that before deciding we tried nothing and ran out of ideas.

I didn't leave my first job because I was non-autistic. I left because I was paid 50k and the next job literally tripled my total comp. Oh, and because I was laid off. but tbf I was already out the door mentally around that time after 2 years of nothing but chastising and looking at the next opportunity.

I would have (outside of said chastising) gladly stayed if I got boosted to 75k. I was still living within my means on 50k.

>Hiring and training junior developers seems incredibly difficult and like a total waste of energy

If that's the attitude at large, we're all falling into a tragedy of the commons.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#432

Post by johnnyanmac »

QuercusMax wrote: post #117
ilc wrote: post #97

I think AI clouds the real issues around Junior hiring. Defective companies. Let's say you hire your great new engineer. Ok, great! Now their value is going to escalate RAPIDLY over the next 2-3 years. And by rapidly, it could be 50-100%. Because someone else will pay that to NOT train a person fresh out of college! What company hands out raises aggressively enough to stay ahead of that truth? None of them, maybe a M…

I actually got a major raise after 6m, and then another major raise 1y into my career, because my boss recognized my value. Sadly this is not as common as it should be - but I've also mentored folks at FAANGs who got promoted after 1y at the new-hire level because they were so clearly excelling. The first promotion is usually not very hard to attain if you're in the top quartile.

>not very hard to attain if you're in the top quartile.

No biggie, just be the best in the interview stage and continue to be the best for years after that. It's that simple.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#433

Post by samrus »

loeg wrote: post #210
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…

Arguably, the cross-pollination of developers moving around is good for employers.

Sure but there needs to be a balance with momentum. You cant keep losing institutional knowledge like that. I think we are heavily disbalanced towards too much churn

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#434

Post by samrus »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #162
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…

This will naturally select for the people who are self driven learners. In a sense this is nothing new, just a continued progression of the raising of the bar of who is still able to contribute economic value to the market

How will they learn without opportunity?

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#435

Post by johnnyanmac »

kovezd wrote: post #360
ilc wrote: post #97

I think AI clouds the real issues around Junior hiring. Defective companies. Let's say you hire your great new engineer. Ok, great! Now their value is going to escalate RAPIDLY over the next 2-3 years. And by rapidly, it could be 50-100%. Because someone else will pay that to NOT train a person fresh out of college! What company hands out raises aggressively enough to stay ahead of that truth? None of them, maybe a M…

What you are saying is not a hiring problem, but an education one. If colleges stayed up to date, and teach valuable skills, the jump wouldn't be so steep!

Dumping our apprenticeship programs onto academia is exacly how we got into this mess to begin with. It has historically not been the job of a college to produce junior talent. They teach a best for T shaped individual and setup for more of their pipeline in research should students want to delve deeper

If industry doesn't want to pay for training, they better pay bootcamps to overhaul themselves and teach what they actually need. I don't think universities will bend much more since they have their own bubble on their hands.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#436

Post by samrus »

smiley1437 wrote: post #344
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?

High risk bets like that cause bubbles. If that bet doesnt pay off then there will be a talent crisis that the american tech industry may not recover from

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#437

Post by johnnyanmac »

gwbas1c wrote: post #253

One of the critical flaws in the article is that the first chart only looks back 5 years, and the second only looks back 10. The boom-bust recession cycle is roughly every 10 years. You can't say that AI is impacting hiring when your data just looks like the typical 10 year cycle. Your data needs to go back further. That being said, what's more likely going on: 1: There are always periods where it's hard for recent c…

>Ignoring AI, how different is it now from 10, 20, and 30 years ago?

Ignoring AI, there is simply more competition and less human interface in the process to begin with. 10 years ago, you'd throw maybe dozens of apps and study interview trivia (this was right before the "leetcdoe era" so not even that). 20 years ago you'd probably just wander around a career fair and stumble into your career. 30 years ago you were as close to shaking your managers' hand for a job as you'd ever be in the modern tech industry.

10 years ago, a reference from nearly anyone in the pipeline to the hiring manager guaranteed at least a look see at you. Now it's a 50/50 at best. "who you know" may not be enough anymore.And now career fairs are 90% advertising firms instead of actual talent aquisition.

>Perhaps we're just seeing many companies realize it's easier to be stricter about who they hire?

if you look at the hiring numbers, you see that hiring globally is in fact not slowing down. That's a bit of a tangent, but that may give a clue to the whole situation here.

Today you may not even get a human to see your resume after 100 job apps. It's not just brutal but a solitary experince. No feedback to improve upon, no advice to take.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#438

Post by johnnyanmac »

austin-cheney wrote: post #27

There are two problems here. 1. The industry cannot define the terms junior or senior. 2. Most seniors today are the prior generation’s juniors with almost no increase of capabilities, just more years on a resume. The article asks about what happens when today’s seniors retire in the future. I would argue we are at that critical juncture now.

>Most seniors today are the prior generation’s juniors with almost no increase of capabilities

I highly doubt throwing even a 3YOE "senior" of 2012 at a modern junior interview would turn out as well as you'd expect. the standards have gotten sky high. That doesn't mean they can't do the job, it means the industry created more hoops to jump through.

I agree to an extent with title inflation (and where the hell is the mid level?), but I don't think peple are confusing "juniors" here. It's new grads to at best 2 years of experience. not much controversy there. I also don' think the idea that the 2014 graduating CS class is smarter than the 2024 class would pass the sniff test.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#439

Post by geon »

locknitpicker wrote: post #413
koolba wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know why people are so hesitant to just fire bad people. It’s pretty obvious when someone starts actually working if they’re going to a net positive. On the order of weeks, not months. Given how much these orgs pay, both direct to head hunters and indirect in interview time, might as well probationally hire the whoever passes the initial sniff test. That also lets you evaluate longer term habits like punctual…

> I don’t know why people are so hesitant to just fire bad people. "Bad" is vague, subjective moralist judgement. It's also easily manipulated and distorted to justify firing competent people who did no wrong. > It’s pretty obvious when someone starts actually working if they’re going to a net positive. On the order of weeks, not months. I feel your opinion is rather simplistic and ungrounded. Only the most egregious…

> manipulated and distorted to justify firing competent people

If you have that kind of office politics going on, that's the issue to be solved.

>toy with people's lives and livelihood as if it was nothing.

If the employee lies about their skills, it is on them.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#440

Post by johnnyanmac »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #354

The problem is "Seniors" started becoming worse a decade ago. Not only wouldn't they mentor, but they wouldn't lead by example. Problem-solving on their own, collaborating with peers, sharing information/communication, doing proper due diligence, organizing and improving themselves and their team/product/business. This was around the same time bootcamps started flooding the industry with amateurs with no experience.…

>The fix is for us to stop letting the industry devolve.

Sadly not in "our" hands. At best, some director/product owner brings it up. Executives have a nice chuckle, and they continue to outsource to anywhere else. This US industry barely wants to hire Americans to begin with at this point.

We're gonna have to divorce from big tech and push more businesses that reflect our desires if we want true change. Or collectively bargain while we have the chance. I don't know what is more likely in this community.

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