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Who Killed the Junior Developer?

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Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#521

Post by GVIrish »

soheil wrote: post #159
mooreds wrote: post #39

It is a tragedy of the commons scenario. Everyone wants senior devs, who were at one point junior devs. No one wants to train junior devs. The OP points out why: * cheaper to have juniorish work done overseas * juniorish work is automated away * juniors on a team slow it down (compared to a team of all seniors) So everyone competes for the senior talent. A more sophisticated long term analysis might look at the benef…

You're missing a rather obvious point. A junior dev after months of training could jump ship for much better comp now that they're less junior or that suddenly some other company's product interests them more. Another point missing is that sometimes there are very hard problems (eg. self-driving cars, fusion power, DNA pattern matching) that need solving quickly and that's what some companies try to do, there are oth…

> A junior dev after months of training could jump ship for much better comp now that they're less junior or that suddenly some other company's product interests them more.

Sure, but that's why you need to give people raises in line with market rates if you don't want to experience high turnover. That goes for junior and more senior people.

Companies often don't want to give big raises as junior people transition into mid-level, then senior. So many companies have a standardized 2-8% pay raise scale, which results in developers being drastically underpaid as they gain experience. The silly part of that is that those same companies are gonna have to pay market rate to replace those skills when their employees leave, and they have to eat the additional recruiting costs, lost institutional knowledge, and ramp up time for a new employee. Penny-wise and pound-foolish as it were.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#522

Post by logfromblammo »

Caveman_Coder wrote: post #501
RangerScience wrote: post #189

People talk about a "developer's union" ever so often, and one of the most commonly brought up counter-points is "well, but what would we need to fight for as a union?" (not that I agree there isn't anything (else) to fight for, but:) it occurs to me that this is an excellent possibility. Devs change jobs. This is good, but (as pointed out) means you maybe don't want to train people up; it's the next company that ben…

> "well, but what would we need to fight for as a union?" Improved compensation, benefits, bonuses, stock options, paid conferences, training, etc...

Bottom-up control of the development process. Our own apprenticeship pipeline. Our own certifications. Genuine influence over interviewing and hiring practices. Minimum contract terms. Our own lobbyists. Promoting business for members outside of Silicon Valley. Our own jobs board. A general strike fund. Our own retirement planning and pensions system. A backup health insurance option.

The lobbyists can start by bringing down the exemptions on overtime pay for tech workers, and by trying to loosen immigration restrictions on the people of our industry.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#523

Post by devopsforlyfe »

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.

You are confusing senior devs and rockstar devs.

Rockstars are lone wolves, write unmaintainable code that works quickly for demos but gives the company pain for years to come as nobody can figure out how to make it stable or maintain it. A rockstar's reputation is self reinforcing because it's easy to get a lot of shit done when one doesn't have to worry about maintainability, communication with the rest of the team members or the company at large, and service.

Senior devs balance development work and "service", a term I'll borrow from academia - hiring, mentoring, speaking, writing docs, etc. They either find fun in these tasks as well (I legit enjoy interviewing and mentoring), or understand this is a necessary part of being a well functioning team player at a senior level.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#524

Post by shoover »

commandlinefan wrote: post #504
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…

> always had to lie, cheat, and steal your way into the field Back in the 90's, when I wanted to move up to working with C++ (the hip, new, "in" thing at the time), I bought a book about C++, read through it, worked the examples, and then started interviewing. The interviewers asked all sorts of arcane questions that I hadn't come across in my few months of study, so I was tanking the interviews. The trick I figured…

Eh, sounds like smart preparation to play the game on its terms. Did those questions end up being seriously relevant to the work? If so, then you prepared yourself better for the job by learning the answers. If not, well, then maybe it's the interviewers who weren't so honest.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#525

Post by virgilp »

tboyd47 wrote: post #388
virgilp wrote: post #223

> we don’t hire junior developers because we can’t afford to have our senior developers mentor them. That feels too dumb to be real (which is exactly why it's probably a real thing). You don't hire senior devs to code - good junior devs can code not only "just as fast", but probably faster too! You hire senior devs to guide you WHAT and HOW to code. And they can do that so much more effectively if they don't have to…

> good junior devs can code not only "just as fast", but probably faster too! For at least 2 companies I've worked at, this is false. Junior devs cannot complete their work at all without help. This may be the real problem: there is no way to learn the skills to do the job without actually getting a job first and learning the skills as you go.

Good junior devs are fairly rare, too - I wasn't claiming you find them everywhere.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#526

Post by delecti »

commandlinefan wrote: post #504
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…

> always had to lie, cheat, and steal your way into the field Back in the 90's, when I wanted to move up to working with C++ (the hip, new, "in" thing at the time), I bought a book about C++, read through it, worked the examples, and then started interviewing. The interviewers asked all sorts of arcane questions that I hadn't come across in my few months of study, so I was tanking the interviews. The trick I figured…

Your story reminds me of the joke/anecdote of the way to cheat on tests. You religiously look over your notes and the textbook in the weeks leading up to the test, so that when you take the test it's like you have a comprehensive cheat sheet with you, but in your head.

If the hiring process wasn't able to distinguish between you or who they thought they were looking for, then it wasn't your responsibility to inform them of it.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#527

Post by ashelmire »

rumcajz wrote: post #10

Isn't the problem the high turnover rate in the industry? Why invest in educating someone if they are going to quit in one year or so?

The problem is that devs can get much larger salary increases by jumping to a new company rather than staying put. The solution to this problem is to reward them for their performance and increased usefulness, especially in their first few years.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#528

Post by dtech »

DannyBee wrote: post #499
binarycheese wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Most inventors are not professors" This is not a great example. In academia, that's because they are fundamentally different jobs in most cases. Most of the professor roles are not teaching their research, and where they are, i would bet your best professors are the inventors. But most are researching x and teaching y. By contrast, in software development, the devs should be teaching, because what they are teaching…

> By contrast, in software development, the devs should be teaching, because what they are teaching is what they are doing on a daily basis, and the knowledge they've learned in how to do that well.

I don't agree, senior tasks are often much more high-level and related to figuring out requirements/stories, or their tasks are hard enough that explaining them to juniors is not the most productive.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#529

Post by JAFTEM »

jnovek wrote: post #468

I've long maintained a maxim that's something like "Look in the opposite direction of everyone else." So when everyone flocks to the bay area, get the heck out of there. When everyone says "I have no space for junior devs" think about how you can take advantage of that underutilized resource. Junior devs are cheap. If you're willing to spend the time to sift -- and you will be doing a lot of resume sifting -- and set…

I understand the appeal of Seattle and the Bay Area, but it sometimes boggles my mind that larger tech companies don't build in cities where there are a large number of new grads looking for jobs. [0] LA county produces the most CS grads in the country, [1] and most of them are moving out of the area and up the coast for lack of junior SWE openings in SoCal. Any of the Big N could have a monopoly on talent coming out of USC, UCLA, Cal Tech, UCI, UCSB, UCSD, Harvey Mudd, Cal Poly, etc.

[0] https://datausa.io/profile/cip/110701/#counties_most_degrees

[1] https://www.ocregister.com/2017/07/24/is-southern-california...

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#530

Post by commandlinefan »

virgilp wrote: post #223

> we don’t hire junior developers because we can’t afford to have our senior developers mentor them. That feels too dumb to be real (which is exactly why it's probably a real thing). You don't hire senior devs to code - good junior devs can code not only "just as fast", but probably faster too! You hire senior devs to guide you WHAT and HOW to code. And they can do that so much more effectively if they don't have to…

> You hire senior devs to guide you WHAT and HOW to code.

Every organization I've worked at (for the past 25 years) has relegated that rule to the much lower prestige, much lower paying, zero career path role of either "business analyst" or "project manager". If you can produce code, you'll be producing code - and by and large, that's the only way to have anything resembling a future unless you're on an upper management track.

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