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Who Killed the Junior Developer?

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Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#541

Post by bitwize »

mattjsmith wrote: post #476
dbingham wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 com…

That's why I've always told people that I'm a "studio musician" developer. Not a rock star, but a competent professional the studio calls when they need to make a record.

That's what I'd been saying for a while -- the best devs are session musicians. They have enough all-around comoetence to deliver what is asked for for that particular recording.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#542

Post by gnachman »

My experience at Google and Facebook is that junior devs are hires in great numbers. Intern season means you can’t find a parking spot because there are so many of them. This article doesn’t ring true to me, but my view of the world is narrow since I’ve only been at big companies. Is he talking about startups? I thought those skewed young too.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#543

Post by mixmastamyk »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #516
Consultant32452 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience promoting from within is still insufficient. Getting a promotion means maybe a 10% raise. Quitting means a 50-100% raise. I've got a guy on my team in a junior-ish position making 80 who is about to leave to make 160. There's no promotion path in the company to get that kind of raise over night.

Where the heck are these kinds of companies? I've heard jumping for a $10-20k raise (so, roughly 20-30%), but double for a junior? Unless COL influences stuff, I'd be wondering what he did right and knock that off as an outlier.

His junior position probably doesn’t have a junior label, and the next one might have a senior.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#544

Post by bitwize »

dbingham wrote: post #447
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.

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 com…

Near as I can tell, the term stems from the 80s computer gaming industry, in which the game studio heads got the idea to promote the individual developers by name as if they were rock stars, and oftentimes attempt to treat them to the "rock star lifestyle" (girls, parties, etc.) in order to keep their output from flagging. In those days, games were often written by teams as small as one, and no bigger than a handful -- and the studios themselves were often fly-by-night outfits whose idea of "product packaging" was a Ziploc bag to ship the disk and manual in.

Eventually in the 90s, some developers really took the rock star bit to heart and started plastering their own names all over their output (cf. "John Romero's Daikatana", "American McGee's Whatever-American-McGee-Is-Working-On-Now"), but for the most part, developers at the time hated the rock star characterization.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#545

Post by commandlinefan »

shoover wrote: post #524
commandlinefan wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Did those questions end up being seriously relevant to the work?

Oh, God no. I've never been asked a question in a job interview that was in any way relevant to the work I actually ended up doing.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#546

Post by bitwize »

dkarl wrote: post #458
vinceguidry wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to believe this, now I'm skeptical. Even if they find holes in the developer's competence, interviewing is not a task, it's a business process orchestrated and controlled by middle management. Say the competent developer finds holes in the interviewee's knowledge and skills, his findings become a line item in the report passed up to said middle management. The middle manager, hopefully not in HR, has to weigh…

This is a symptom of managers not understanding the jobs of the people they're managing. I don't know if that kind of management works under any circumstances, but it definitely can't work if people who don't understand programming (and I specifically mean programming, no matter how well they understand the rest of a developer's job) are managing junior developers.

This is why it's imperative that software devs get on the management track.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#547

Post by zappo2938 »

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.

I'm a little older but I'm only 6 years in the industry. I worked at a job where they were using technologies from 10 years ago, i.e. tons of custom PHP5 and MySQL on top of Wordpress, while I took the time to learn Angular, Node.js, MongoDB, Postgres, React, and modern tooling like Grunt and Webpack -- this list can go on and on. Now I have a situation where I had to go back in time and learn how to do things 4 years before I started hacking and everyone in any position of power is treating me like I'm a threat. I open my mouth at a meeting and someone will immediately shut me down. At every corner, I'm being mansplained to and I'm a man.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#548

Post by Caveman_Coder »

logfromblammo wrote: post #522
Caveman_Coder wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 bring…

> "loosen immigration restrictions on the people of our industry"

I don't think a U.S. union would try to loosen immigration restrictions...they'd care about protecting the rights of U.S. workers...also, why would a union representing U.S. workers want to increase the labor supply?

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#549

Post by bpicolo »

gnachman wrote: post #542

My experience at Google and Facebook is that junior devs are hires in great numbers. Intern season means you can’t find a parking spot because there are so many of them. This article doesn’t ring true to me, but my view of the world is narrow since I’ve only been at big companies. Is he talking about startups? I thought those skewed young too.

I suspect this is referring the world of software at large, outside the SV sphere of influence.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#550

Post by hinkley »

megaman22 wrote: post #482
ams6110 wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> accountants leave school fully capable of employment Well, fully capable of entry-level employment. Anyone who graduates from a reputable school with a Comp. Sci. or InfoSys type of major is also fully capable of entry-level employment. Accountants aren't really capable of anything but grunt work until they pass the CPA which normally is after several years of grunt work and additional learning and study. Programme…

> Anyone who graduates from a reputable school with a Comp. Sci. or InfoSys type of major is also fully capable of entry-level employment. No, they're really not, for at least a year. It takes at least that long for most new graduates to get over the hump and learn enough of the practical skills and industry practices that their university left them woefully ignorant of, so that they can start being marginally useful…

I worked with and later became a “student programmer” when I was in college. I had classes with some of these guys and I would ask them how long the homework took. “2 hours”? That’s crazy. It took me 10 and I knew people who were 15 hours in and not done yet.

Then I got on a new project as a dev. Within months I was down to 3-4 hours for similar assignments. My last class at school was the first time we had a shortage of hardware (good school). I would sit at home and remote into one of the machines, get my code to compile and show up to the lab the afternoon before it was due to debug. And everybody looked at me like I looked at my old coworkers.

It’s been a while since I’ve talked to undergrads but I always tell them to beg borrow or steal an internship or a job on campus. You have no idea how far a little concrete experience takes you.

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