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The Junior Hiring Crisis

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Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#461

Post by austin-cheney »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #458
austin-cheney wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not that people from 10, 15, 20 years ago were smarter. It’s that they were expected to do more. The business goal, even then, was not higher quality output but was commoditization of hiring/firing and this has been fulfilled more efficiently over time. Title inflation is often the result of retention, which is another aspect of hiring/firing.

Hmm, I agree and disagree. Seniors were expected to take more responsibility, but they worked on smaller code bases. I agree the demansa have changed to meet the codebase and scale, though. As an example, I'm sure the first Unreal Engine was made by a crew in their garage, in times where they were trailblazing techniques we take for granted 30 years later. That isn't something most modern seniors could do, but the en…

I have spent most of my career with seniors that cannot stand up a new application of any size. The reductio ad absurdem of it is that most seniors today can trace their expertise two distinct areas: 1) superior refinement of basic literacy, 2) configuration of external tools. This is the direct result of business attempting to game economics by pushing cost centers out of their organization thereby resulting in a more factory like environment of hire/fire and then config and go. From a cost perspective this has worked masterfully, but the other side of that coin is that expertise is lost and never recovered.

As an experiment look at the hiring board for new YC companies. https://www.workatastartup.com/

Some of these companies actually are focused on product first, but most are focused on idea exploration and sales while building out the product as necessary. I understand that sales make money and code does not, but sales still isn't a product. Focusing on product first is a luxury only available to those that can do so from prior experience and with the confidence that user acquisition is more readily available to their product offering.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#462

Post by pf4711 »

Wow, this elitist attitude is the problem. Assuming the worst about juniors and being totally unwilling to give people a chance, God forbid any training or mentorship. f--- software engineering. What. s--- career full of elitist pricks. Yes many of these people may not be very good, just like a lot of mediocre mids and seniors that believe they're gods gift to the world even if they've stubbornly refused to learn very little over 10 years, but many of these juniors would be extremely valuable if given a chance let alone any help.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#463

Post by ah979 »

jmye wrote: post #316
skeeter2020 wrote: post #269

>> we’ve spent a decade normalizing senior engineers opting out of developing the next generation. This seems like a deeply flawed take on the dual track IC-management ladder. Senior ICs don't keep plugging away by themselves because they're not managers, they just don't get people-management tasks. I think the leadership & mentorship they provide is harder than for me (a manager) because they don't have the hammer o…

Yes! Had the same instant reaction to that line. A lead engineer doesn’t get to lock himself or herself in a closet and ignore the team, and any team/company allowing that is failing its team as a result. They should be out there helping level up tech skills, and influencing code/behavior just as much as a people manager should be guiding career trajectory.

Author here - yeah, what you're describing is absolutely what I would love to see more of. And of course my thinking was biased by my own observations at companies I've worked at as well as anecdotal confirmation from others, but nothing research based. I've seen a lot of lead/principal/staff engineers go off in their own world and dictate direction to the team instead of leading through influence and connection, which I've found very frustrating. Not all, though. And so the ones that did take a leadership role really stood out to me. I always tried to do that myself, as well, and remember what it felt like to be a junior.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#464

Post by ah979 »

nunez wrote: post #276

Annie! Good to see you hit front on here! You're totally right. 10 minutes on /r/cscareerquestions (without even sorting by `top`, though it's more brutal if you do) is enough to confirm it. I normally wouldn't cite Reddit as a source, but this same subreddit was overflowing with posts on fending off recruiters and negotiating already-sky-high comp packages just two years ago. Seeing how quickly the tables turned is…

CN! Nice to cross paths!

You're right that it's sobering to see how it's changed so much in the last 5 years. And yeah, it's not just the juniors that have to think about this but those in their cushy jobs that get hit with layoffs out of the blue, too. I don't say that to illicit fear; I say that to illicit action. We don't live in the same world anymore where you can rest on your laurels, unfortunately.

You've always been so good at all this, though! You help others, get curious about where you can add value to their situations, people know what you're about, and you exude authenticity. Poster child for what I'm trying to tell people to do to take action. :D

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#465

Post by tsoukase »

To me it seems that large US tech companies had a start-up behaviour until the last years (massive hiring, ambitious goals and VC money). This fades away relatively fast now and they cash out their investments.

Another reason might be the low potential of the new generation of graduates (see lower math scores and possibly IQ). They might have interviewed some and are disappointed and unwilling to hire from this pool.

Last but not least comes the current trend to substitute humans by LLMs.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#466

Post by cindyllm »

pf4711 wrote: post #462

Wow, this elitist attitude is the problem. Assuming the worst about juniors and being totally unwilling to give people a chance, God forbid any training or mentorship. f--- software engineering. What. s--- career full of elitist pricks. Yes many of these people may not be very good, just like a lot of mediocre mids and seniors that believe they're gods gift to the world even if they've stubbornly refused to learn ver…

[dead]

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#467

Post by ah979 »

teeray wrote: post #88

> the unintended consequence of that is that we’ve spent a decade normalizing senior engineers opting out of developing the next generation. This is because "management" includes a bunch of BS that few engineers want to actually deal with. Performance discussions, 1:1s, being hauled into mandatory upper-level meetings, not actually building things anymore, etc. If it was simply pairing with juniors from time to time…

> If it was simply pairing with juniors from time to time to hack on things and show them cool stuff, it would be wonderful.

I think that's a lot of it! (Author here, btw) I think that doing more of that actually makes performance discussions easier and takes the place of 1:1s a lot of times. The whole point of performance management is to nurture the relationship with the junior so that they grow into the type of senior that they need to be to be a contributing member of the team. And if you can achieve that better through hacking and pairing, then by all means.

As far as all the other BS meetings, I think that a lot of people in leadership positions aren't intentional/strategic enough about which meetings they allow themselves to get "hauled into", so they end up totally jaded and burnt out. They think they can't say no to these things, and so they lose the reins on their actual goals. If you step back and ask yourself what stakeholders actually need from you to feel heard, seen, validated, informed, etc, then it may look different from a calendar full of meetings.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#468

Post by lordnacho »

fatty_patty89 wrote: post #299
lordnacho wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of us can't live like that. The other place you will meet struggling artists is sports. Train several times a week, neglect your social life, your studies, just learn how to chase after a ball. Only people who are crazy driven will actually do this. The ones who don't make it, they try to climb up from lower league clubs. They go on and on, carving out a career. But most kids do not have a burning passion for any…

> There's so much that a person who can code and can deal with statistics can apply himself do. Can you give a few examples please?

For instance, I have a friend with a phd in designing medical experiments. Someone from the biosciences field will come to him and ask for how exactly his experiment needs to be set up to make valid conclusions.

One of the guys I met on HN got into marine telecoms. Something about the necessity of compressing data back before it became ubiquitous.

I work in quant trading stuff, where we try to use stats to decide what to buy and sell.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#469

Post by crisdux »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #391
crisdux wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate greed and government collusion have revived indentured servitude through work visas, sanctuary based illegal immigration and virtual offshore outsourcing. You are supporting a vile practice.

I never said I supported such. Merely that if I were in control, I'd probably do the same. The US has rules to play by, the corporations are playing by them. Recently some of the rules seem to involve specific donations but it is the current set of rules. In this case, the corporations have global reach, so they may decide that other countries people can be more productive per $. Whether importing or offshoring. Are…

> I never said I supported such. Merely that if I were in control, I'd probably do the same.

So, given the chances, you would be a criminal too. I don't know why I waste my time arguing on the internet lol. Good day.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#470

Post by ah979 »

l2silver wrote: post #372

Alright, bring on the downvotes. It's the bloated junior salaries that have killed their market. I never like hiring juniors, I never like working with juniors, and I'd rather pay the extra 20-30% and get someone more experienced. I'm sorry, but if you don't get into FANG, you should basically be working for nothing until you have some experience. It's cruel, it's not fair, but it's just not worth it for the employer…

I don't disagree with this. (author here) I think it could help overall to lower starting salaries, but it'll never happen. It's all a math problem at the end of the day.
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