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Who Killed the Junior Developer?

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Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#441

Post by runedog »

vinceguidry wrote: post #364

There were never any junior dev jobs. You have always had to lie, cheat, and steal your way into the field. I have a buddy who legit cheated his way to the top Magento certification and now cycles through $150k+ jobs where they keep him on long enough to realize he doesn't have any coding skills then they fire him. Reason is software is always an ancillary concern to the business. You see this in other fields, like s…

What do you suggest for those of us who believe we would be terrible at management? Add to that, I also think I would be miserable doing it.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#442

Post by vinceguidry »

jmvoodoo wrote: post #426
vinceguidry wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll see your management issue and raise you a leadership one. At my last job, a $40MM cosmetics and skincare company, the CEO had a great deal of trouble figuring out how to get his e-commerce department properly managed. I was willing to step up, and for a brief time they allowed me to bring in candidates for a position that would report to me, but I didn't have enough political cover over me so that fizzled out. I…

This is absolutely true. Ive been lucky that the last 17 years of my career have been spent reporting to the CEO and have had a large amount of leeway in my position. That's not always the case and a bad leadership team can't create a good culture.

I should have made a case for reporting to the CEO myself. None of the three managers could figure out how to do it, and I spent more time than I should have trying to coach them on how to handle him. But I wanted to be comfortable and reporting to the CEO would have been the opposite of that.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#443

Post by jschwartzi »

tejasmanohar wrote: post #245
maxxxxx wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's something I have noticed too. In the 90s most people I worked with were genuinely interested in the work and often came from very eclectic backgrounds. Almost nobody had a CS degree. Now it seems a lot of people go into programming because it pays well and looks like a good career but they don't really care for tech. I definitely found the industry more fun in the 90s but that may just be the fact it's becomin…

I didn't work in the 90s, but I'm with you here. I joined the industry out of interest. I didn't know a thing about pay when I started programming. As demand for developers increases and the industry becomes "mainstream", it's inevitable that we'll attract more folks who are purely in it for the high-paying job and "secure lifestyle". The job of a school teacher is to teach, but your job at a startup is to empower th…

The attitude that I need to devote myself to the company and forego any outside interests until the company is profitable is really unhealthy. The company I am leaving now wanted me to do that for 5 years. Imagine doing nothing but being at work for 5 years. Or imagine not dating anyone for 5 years because you're spending all your time at the office.

The product is finished now, so I'm leaving, and frankly the only reason I stuck around was because finishing products looks good on a resume.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#444

Post by burlesona »

austenallred wrote: post #104

I’m the cofounder of a YC-backed Computer Science academy ( https://LambdaSchool.com/computer-science ), and we’ve noticed a few things: 1. The junior dev market is flooded. It’s also flooded with people that cannot code. We’ve done quite a bit of analysis, and we’re talking 10% can write fizzbuzz. Bootcamps are pumping people out as fast as they can collect money, and while some are solid juniors many are just compl…

This all rings very true to me.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#445

Post by dep_b »

jacquesm wrote: post #363
dep_b wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Netherlands is a special place in Software Hell. Where the non-suits are only a cost. "Devs can't be cheap enough! We can't find decent devs!"

That's a silly generalization. I've got a pretty good overview of software development in Western Europe and NL isn't a special place for better or worse compared to the surrounding countries. If you want to get paid a lot more and you have the right skills the City or Silicon Valley are good options (assuming you are allowed to move there).

Perhaps a bit over generalized but I do feel that there’s an unusual large gap in salary between suits and devs even when comparing to countries like Germany.

It doesn’t need to be a huge tech hub at all. Luckily English resembles Dutch so most Dutch speak it well enough to survive a job abroad.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#446

Post by runedog »

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to make myself available for mentoring over the internet? I'm sure there's many possibilities, but has anyone had actual success with any?

Preferably I could get paid doing it, but if that's not really feasible then I wouldn't mind pro bono.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#447

Post by dbingham »

binarycheese wrote: post #403
jmvoodoo wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My "standard" team typically has two jr engineers, and two Sr engineers. When we hire Sr engineers we hire people that like to mentor others and see it as part of being Sr. Jr engineers know that in order to become Sr one of the skills they need to master is mentoring. This is 100% a management issue, and it starts at the hiring filter. Hiring Jrs btw is its own skill as you are filtering for potential not skill or k…

Then you will need two senior devs. This is because rockstar devs rarely want to mentor junior devs nor attend meetings. Most inventors are not professors.

Then they aren't a rockstar. And frankly, I've spent my career cleaning up the obfuscated, badly documented, untested code of "rockstar" devs.

The idea of a "rockstar" you seem to be referring to has, in my experience, been a dev who can go into a corner and pump out high volumes of code with little supervision or collaboration. That's great, except no one else can make sense of the code they pump out, so when it comes time for the next guy to add a feature to the rockstar's mess it takes 2 to 3 times as long as it should.

I've also had to clean up messes by rockstars who made unilateral decisions about incorporating new technologies into a product. Like building out a single part of the product in React with out asking anyone else. You see, the rockstar didn't like meetings and didn't want to make the case to the rest of the team for why we should all learn React and gradually switch over. Instead, he just stuck it into the code. So now, you have a couple of views built as React components, and the rest of the thing is in Backbone. No one else knows React or has time to learn it, cause we're blazing ahead really fast. They just get very confused when they have to change something in those components and it takes them forever. But the rockstar got to have his fun and play with new tech.

This conception of a "rockstar" isn't a great developer... it's a selfish, cocky developer. When you hear "rockstar" dev, you shouldn't hear great performer. You should think of Keith Moon trashing his hotel room and driving his car into the hotel pool.

A great dev knows the value of documenting their code and writing testable code. A great dev knows the value of taking the extra time to make code easily understood and easily modified -- that sweet spot between spaghetti and over engineering. A great dev loves to mentor junior devs, enjoys walking other devs through their code, is happy to discuss design decisions with the team, and willing to admit when maybe their idea isn't the best one.

A great dev doesn't think they are god's gift to code, they are humble enough to understand they are one part of a team. They put the team first and work hard to teach others what they know, while always remembering they don't know everything.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#448

Post by brooklyn_ashey »

MollyR wrote: post #384
padobson wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that you pointed out the need for political strength within organizations. I agree, and I think it directly conflicts with this line from the post: Yeah, I’m gonna bring gender into it, because I’m a woman and when women take on roles like this they often get pigeonholed into “den mother” stereotypes. That means less prestige and less prestige usually means less pay. Having the admiration and respect of the ne…

Wait until you get old (past 35), I'm a woman (ex web deck "ninja/rockstar/etc") and I can safely say the ageist comments are far worse. No one believes you can keep up the development sprints, or new technologies.

Molly, you are so right. And this is why internships are a bunch of hooey too. ("hooey" only in the supposedly merit-based on-ramp sense- of course they're valuable for teaching and learning and building a great team) The entire process toward getting tech job is ageist if all we have to offer "junior devs" is the internship role. (all the ads say that interns must be recent graduates or currently enrolled in an undergrad CS program) Nevermind if that's even legal. We know legality doesn't come into it until a whole movement and hashtag gets going. The ageism is sickening. It does seem that those who are the most ageist may suffer the consequences of their culture later. For example, it's interesting that Facebook is now officially the "old(er) person's social media" according to The Guardian and many other sources this week. Do note that "old" had to be changed in rewrite to "old(er)" in the paper, so as not to appear as fully insulting and ageist as the statement to address the data actually is.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#449

Post by risotto_groupon »

tboyd47 wrote: post #380
vinceguidry wrote: post #364

There were never any junior dev jobs. You have always had to lie, cheat, and steal your way into the field. I have a buddy who legit cheated his way to the top Magento certification and now cycles through $150k+ jobs where they keep him on long enough to realize he doesn't have any coding skills then they fire him. Reason is software is always an ancillary concern to the business. You see this in other fields, like s…

Ok, the first part of your comment makes no sense to me. How do you lie your way into a certification? An interview I can understand, but don't you have to take a test to get a cert? From the second paragraph down, you're absolutely right for non-software companies. They still don't have an understanding of how to build software development into their business model. They don't realize that the low barrier entry to b…

The Magento Certification tests are so divorced from the skills and reality of developing a Magento site and the study materials are so, so, so bad that most organizations just send a couple of canaries to take the cert expecting them to fail, then based on the questions they saw the org will put together their own memorization based study materials and train other devs using their own internal docs.

THIS IS INTENTIONAL on the part of Magento. They want a high fail rate. It ensures that only orgs with lots of money (who can afford a couple failures) will get a large number of certs and become official Magento partners, and since you pay for each test more failures means more money.

They have carefully structured the cert so that about 1/2 the questions are actual general skills and useful knowledge for working with the framework and about 1/2 are rote memorization such as, "What is the EXACT class name and Method Name that does X?" where options are

My_Basic_Class_Car::doThing() My_Basics_For_Class_Car::doThings() My_Class_For_Car::doThing() My_Class_for_Cars::doThings()

You need like 75% to pass... so if you're really lucky you can guess your way through the memorization portion but 90% won't pass on their first try.

If I were a hiring manager looking at a candidate with a Magento cert I could glean 1 of 2 things:

1) This person took the cert independently and cared enough to cheat or pay a lot of money to get it.

2) This person worked at an org with enough institutional knowledge of Magento and their payola process that they probably learned SOMETHING while they were there.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#450

Post by milesvp »

g051051 wrote: post #352
moreless wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But the team as a whole would probably still achieve much more if you were mostly guiding other (less experienced) devs.

I do. But I'm still faster than them in head to head coding throughput (code produced, error counts, etc). I've got decades of experience in developing software. No way someone fresh out of college is going to equal, let alone out-code me. That's not to say they're not good, but the assertion: > can code not only "just as fast", but probably faster too! is pure BS.

I believe it. Though my experience is that junior devs can be much faster at producing lines of code, and most of it's junk. Senior devs will always be faster at producing bug free lines of code, and certainly at catching more of the edge cases. Moreover, the best devs I've worked with know when not to code at all to solve a problem, which is a totally foreign concept to junior devs who seem to prefer coding to thinking.

When I look at code written by junior devs I often think 'dear god, how is there so much code that does nothing, and how did it all get witten since I last had a chance to look'.

Makes me wonder if there are parallels in writing. My understanding is that the most prolific authors can only write 8 publishable pages a day. I'd bet that amateur writers can produce more pages than that, but no page could be published without at least as much time spent by an editor.

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