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The Junior Hiring Crisis

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Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#491

Post by Daishiman »

constantcrying wrote: post #22

The idea that the only reasonable path into a software related career is through networking may be true, but it obviously signals something deeply wrong with the culture around work. It is also something which is likely to be quite harmful, since it selects for people who are great at networking over people who have good technical skills. Obviously interpersonal communication is important, but how well a 20 year old…

Agree, but ultimately it's a regression to the mean of most white-collar professions, where grades and network make for a significant jump-start in someone's career.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#492

Post by Herring »

knollimar wrote: post #488
Herring wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just tired of re-litigating this issue. Discuss with your favorite frontier model. Roughly, productivity has been outpacing pay since the mid 1970s, and I wrote about this in another comment here. There's just so much confusion here. Some people like you don't get why a world where a handful of billionaires own everything is a bad idea. Madness. I think nothing less than another depression will get through to mos…

Increased capital investment (e.g. software) could explain productivity not attributable to the employee. On its face, productivity vs pay isn't a faor metric. I agree that problem exists, but we shouldn't use it to benchmark

> I own your tools therefore I own everything you do with them

Like I said, madness.

It's like slavery was technically outlawed but a lot of America strongly disagreed. And they're posting on HN.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#493

Post by shagie »

throwup238 wrote: post #482
shagie wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Professional engineering associations between civil engineers and chemical engineers? One takes the FE exam ( https://ncees.org/exams/fe-exam/ ). You will note at the bottom of the page "FE Chemical" and "FE Civil" which are two different exams. Then you have an apprenticeship for four years as an Engineer in Training (EIT). Following, that, you take the PE exam. https://ncees.org/exams/pe-exam/ You will note that…

So what you’re saying is that it’s a solved problem. If we can figure out how to safely certify both bridge builders and chemical engineers working with explosives, we can figure out a way to certify both React developers and those working on cruise missile flight control software.

I'm saying the idea that you can do one test for software engineering and never have to study again or be tested on a different domain in the future isn't something that professional engineering licensure solves.

Furthermore, licensure requires state level legislation and makes it harder for employees (especially the EIT) to change jobs or move to other states for work there.

Licensure, the way that people often point to it as a way to solve the credentials problem vs interviews, isn't going to solve the problems that people think it would.

Furthermore, it is only something if there is a reason to do it. If there isn't a reason to have a licensed engineer signing off on designs and code there isn't a reason for a company to hire such.

Why should a company pay more for someone with a license to design their website when they could hire someone more cheaply who doesn't have a license? What penalties would a company have for having a secretary do some vbscripting in excel or a manager use Access rather than hiring a licensed developer?

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#494

Post by alephnerd »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #452
alephnerd wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps juniors (and in fact all of us) are going to seem more palatable as contractors at first It actually might help. This is the model used in Eastern Europe and India - the vast majority of new grads are hired by mass recruiters like EPAM, WITCH, Deloitte, and Accenture at low base salaries but also the expectation that they self train and learn how to become productive SWEs, or they just stagnate at the low r…

>if I can hire a junior SWE for $60k-80k, invest in training them, and then bumping salaries to market rate after they have matured. 1. if you're in a high CoL area, how are they living off of 60k? 2. the big gamble is trusting companies to give a salary bump after that point and not instead cut them off. trust in corporate isn't exactly high right now.

1. They have no choice but to find a way, just like Brits and Canadians are today because they are now competing in a global market. Additionally, every other white collar field offers new grad salaries in that range in Tier 1 cities in the US. Why do CS majors deserve to be paid more than an Accounting major, Nursing major, or a MechE major?

2. True, but it's also easier to get hired once you have the new grad stink removed.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#495

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

silverquiet wrote: post #489
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it seems rather difficult for me to have .1 child. Hence, the "on average". For any 10 couples, they should have 21 children. If some have fewer, the rest have to have more. >it's impossible for me to have any children because I am a single man Sounds like a "you" problem.

> Hence, the "on average". For any 10 couples, they should have 21 children. If some have fewer, the rest have to have more. This would seem to agree with "not everyone has to have children" - mathematically speaking you can quite simply put a couple zeros into the equation and still arrive at 2.1 > Sounds like a "you" problem. I have no problem with the situation at all as I have never in my life had an interest in…

>This would seem to agree with "not everyone has to have children" -

No, but there are some fools who might conclude that just one person has to have millions of children.

>I have no problem with the situation at all as I have never

Oh, you have a problem. You just can't see it yet. While younger, your problem is that you will shoulder an ever-increasing burden as fewer younger people support many more of the elderly in generations past, until you yourself are then elderly and the few young people simply can't support you at all. A stagnating economy, defense insecurities to make the 20th century look tame, it all goes to shit.

>and I doubt the answer is to try and apply pressure to individuals to have children

Yet you're apparently happy to see people try to pressure the hundreds reading the comments here to not have children.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#496

Post by venturecruelty »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #472
venturecruelty wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friendly reminder that, on a planet of eight billion (and climbing) people, many of whom live in places with too much heat and not enough food and water, not everyone has to have children. And that's okay.

[flagged]

>For population to remain stable, everyone has to have (on average) 2.1 kids.

I never said I want the population to remain stable.

>Any lower than this, population starts shrinking.

Yes, and?

>Children grow up seeing all their role models have less than 2 (even none at all), internalize that as normal, and then they won't end up having more (at least on average), and so it becomes a death spiral.

I'm gonna need a big, fat citation here, hoss.

>Extinction looms.

Oh, come on.

>You're probably trying to be friendly, but if you are you're just plain wrong. And if not, well, then you're secretly sitting there in glee at the prospect of human extinction and hoping at least a few people fall for your "friendly reminder" spiel.

What a remarkably uncharitable interpretation of what I said. I don't particularly care what happens to humanity; its existence, or lack thereof, doesn't really affect me one lick. One day, I'll be dead, and it won't matter to me anyway. I think it would be neat if we could clean up our act and stop destroying the planet, maybe have the Star Trek future we always imagined, but I won't be terribly put out if the human experiment ends, and neither should you. Please don't project your feelings onto me.

If the only option is "infinite growth forever so I can prop up my 401(k)" and "human extinction", only one of those spares the rest of the planet. But I'm pretty sure there's a secret third thing, which is: the population lowers down to a more manageable number, and then everyone can have whatever stable birth rate makes sense.

Remember that humans aren't special. We aren't unique. Humanity is beautiful, but we, too, are part and parcel of this planet. We just got lucky and developed big brains and useful tools. We are not immune to the forces that govern other species and other natural processes here. One big meteor impact and that's it for another few million years, at least. The hubris comes in thinking that we deserve to exist, and not just exist on, but dominate this planet. That couldn't be further from the truth.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#497

Post by dysoco »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #394
dangus wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying this plan is realistic or more like a pipe dream? This is kind of like saying “Get your flight hours in on Microsoft Flight Simulator and then Delta Airlines will hire you.” All unpaid and in your spare time between your two minimum wage jobs, of course.

Maybe software development will become more like a doctor or an engineer where you are expected to come fully trained on your own time and dime. It's sad that the great opportunities have become more out of reach. But that seems almost expected for a job that's relatively easy, safe, and pays well.

A doctor will get hired immediately after college (with very poor pay though) and become an intern/resident, their diploma is enough to show they know their stuff and are qualified for at least an entry position.

A recently graduated Software Engineer or Computer Scientist won't, and they will get interviewed and have to go through hoops as if their diploma wasn't worth a dime.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#498

Post by kulahan »

andrewmutz wrote: post #205
kulahan wrote: post #150

Earlier 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…

They could do that: hire juniors, lose money while you train them, and give them aggressive raises. Or they could just do what they are doing: skip the juniors and just hire the people who've got experience.

People will remember this when they're more senior in their career.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#499

Post by bradlys »

lordnacho wrote: post #134

I 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…

Haven’t seen anyone mention this but this is how it works in China. You have to study the same thing since you were 16 and completely ace it. If you decide during or after college that you don’t like the job path you chose (or really your parents chose) as a teenager then too bad. You’re locked into it for life or you’re stuck with never getting a job because the job market in China for young people is so horrendous. (Much higher youth unemployment rate)

They have terrible interviews there as well that go much deeper than here. They’ll analyze your family - not just you.

This is just a symptom of a really bad economy. That’s what the US is in right now. China’s youth are suffering from this as well.

Re: The Junior Hiring Crisis

#500

Post by twosdai »

sevenseacat wrote: post #444
twosdai wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing unit tests, manual validation work, manual testing. Automating Deployments of infrastructure, DNS work, tracking down annoying one off bugs, fixing and validating dependency issues. Basically this type of maintenance work for any sufficiently complex codebase. (Over 20k LOC) When I was an QA intern / Software Dev Intern. I did all of that junk.

I don't think I'd trust a senior that didn't do at least some of those things themselves. I mean, they just want to write code without testing it? Or fixing the bugs that come out of it?

Writing automated tests is not the same thing as testing it. Senior engineers write a lot of code, write some tests, do some manual validation. But its usually far from complete.

Other roles in a software team can handle making a complete test suite for a project, and making sure that it covers all of the required end user functionality. In some shops they will push all of these together into a "fullstack" kind of role, in other software shops they will have dedicated team members who's job it is to handle some of this burden. Interns historically filled in the glue for this.

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