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Who Killed the Junior Developer?

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Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#601

Post by Kalium »

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…

A lot of shops view senior devs as the people who write more, better, faster code. Not the people who think about what and how. That's for architectural councils, which meet in misty glades in dark robes at midnight or something.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#602

Post by BraveNewCurency »

throwawayfh9 wrote: post #431
Itaxpica wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All copyright on work done on my laptop belongs to me, and only me. You can 'rent' it by paying me my wage but as soon as I leave, all code on it is mine and I'm taking it with me for future 'reference'. Don't know how this works legally but since I'm not a self employed person who has a business contract, I'm pretty sure you cannot legally force someone to use their own stuff without compensation. In the US at least…

Why are the people who are so cocksure always the ones who know the least? “I’ve (incorrectly) interpreted copyright law, and I admit I don’t know how the law works, but I’m pretty sure I’m right.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#603

Post by mypalmike »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #6

I love mentoring. I always have. I used to help out other kids in my high school programming classes. Despite holding several high-level software development positions, what is the total number of times I've been asked by management to mentor more junior folks? Zero. I did it because I love sharing knowledge and I like seeing looks of understanding appear on my colleagues' faces when they "get something" for the firs…

The way to learn professional coding as a junior dev is to consume massive quantities of programming books while working on side projects. Mentoring is great, but its value is usually very local to the current needs of a team.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#604

Post by elliotec »

lr4444lr wrote: post #518
jerf wrote: post #414

A hypothesis for part of the problem that I've scrolled through most of this conversation and still not seen: Junior developers are having a hard time finding a job because the tasks have gotten harder . As easy as people may claim "cloud" is, if a junior developer has to learn the three Javascript libraries, two backend languages, a devops cloud deployment system, and three monitoring technologies just to be able to…

I've been saying this for a while, and I think it will lead to the demise of the bootcamps, and is already causing a cascade of unemployment in low-skill indian IT from what I read. The bar is simply getting higher. I think this is a good thing overall. It's also why I care almost exclusively about CS fundamentals in technical interviews, unless we have a very specific need.

How does exclusively interviewing on CS fundamentals get you people who are good at the job?

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#605

Post by megaman22 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #238
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…

Sounds like senior devs who can't even do teamwork. At my job I'm a junior and guess what I can ask a senior for help cause if my job fails they also fail because oh guess what? Its a team and we are all on the same boat and wait it gets better! I end up spending my own time helping out senior developers in places they get stuck! (Inconceivable!) Yeah sounds like a management team and a bunch of senior devs who have…

On the other hand, you have the schmucks that ask the same questions over and iver, make the same mistakes, over and over, and are utterly helpless without their hand being held. It's a spectrum.

My suspicion is that anyone my age or older had to do a lot of banging their heads against the wall, alone in a room with the machine, when they were learning their craft. It becomes very tiresome dealing with people that don't even try to figure things out on their own first.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#606

Post by commandlinefan »

delecti wrote: post #526
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…

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…

Well, thank you for your (intentional?) kindness, but back then I did sort of misrepresent how well I understood the language.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#607

Post by toastercat »

mercutio2 wrote: post #474
toastercat wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember being a Sophomore in college 5 years ago, and it was hard even finding an internship. My first internship was unpaid because it was the only one that actually called me back. It's funny how many business cards I picked up from recruiters during career fairs, only to have none of them return my calls or emails.

This seems like a pretty common misunderstanding of the point of recruiting events. The recruiters aren’t there to let you know they’ve got jobs. They’re there to talk in person to young people, and figure out which ones have passion for the company/project/etc., and put the passionate people’s resumes at the top of the queue. If you just pick up a business card, it’s indistinguishable from being a cold call/spray an…

I did not mean to imply that I LITERALLY just collected business cards and spoke to no one. Of course, doing so at recruiting events would be absurd.

So, I don't think it's a common misunderstanding. I think it's common sense that you're supposed to speak to the recruiters and build your network.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#608

Post by JCSato »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #555
jfasi wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately I can't share the exact questions we ask, but here's a smattering of the sorts of pitfalls I encounter, in no particular order: * Number one is probably no Big-O performance considerations, or Big-O is an afterthought. For the love of God, please please please don't do a linear search on an unsorted array anywhere inside a nested loop. If you're going to do any appreciable number of lookups, preprocess…

And I hate to say it, but this right here is the problem with the industry. You're expecting a junior dev to know and apply details of edge cases, complex character sets, runtime and space complexity, parallel processing and behavior of caching. This is not junior level knowledge. You're looking for a mid-level to senior developer with zero experience. Yes it's possible to find, but that's not junior level knowledge.…

My thoughts kinda echo this, but I don't think it's outlandish for a junior dev to know a lot of this - what's less reasonable is knowing it with enough depth that they can bring it all to bear without prep in an interview. They've had fewer opportunities to put these things into practice, so I'd only expect them to demonstrate proficiency if they knew ahead of time to study those fairly specifically.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#609

Post by laythea »

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…

I would argue that the kind of person with the skill to navigate into a position, is more likely than the person not, to be able to pick up things faster. So the fact that you may not hit the ground running does not matter so much as your attitude and ability to learn quick. Well done.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#610

Post by dep_b »

jacquesm wrote: post #460
dep_b wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The city-to-city variations in Germany are far larger than the city-to-city variations in NL because of the German history and the presence of Poland. So when you are comparing countries you need to go a bit deeper than that. I know very well paid developers in NL and very poorly paid ones, it is mostly a matter of knowing what you are worth and refusing to charge less than that. You might find 'your spot' taken by a…

Yet across the Polish border developers are relatively well paid versus the suits and it's actually an attractive profession for people that are career oriented. I always see more women working in IT where the job actually pays well, including the US.

I know well paid developers as well, some niches pay pretty well. SAP for example. Or simply people that have domain knowledge that's irreplaceable and know how to negotiate. But something average like C#, RoR or Node development doesn't really pay well in The Netherlands. It's a decent salary but nothing to brag about.

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