Who Killed the Junior Developer? • Hacker News Board

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#751

Post by xigency » Thu, Feb 15, 2018, 5:31 AM UTC

virgilp wrote: post #690

g051051 wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm saying that your arguments are wrong. I don't care how good the junior dev is, I can out code them every time. > If you're working on the premise "we can’t afford to have our senior developers mentor juniors" , you're misusing the senior devs. Actually, no argument there. Mentoring is indeed a critical function of senior devs. > It's not just cost-ineffective (you're paying a senior do to a junior's work) And…

Look. Aren't you spending time thinking? Do you imagine you think faster than everybody aged 23? Could you do an MSc at a top-level US university (in your primary domain of expertise) in a week? Because plenty of people (juniors by definition, almost all of them) can do it in 2 years, so if you're "100x" in the sense that you say you are, you should be able to do all that work in 1 week. At least that much should be…

Education is a good point. New algorithms are often found in academia that aren't exactly on Hacker News all of the time. It doesn't matter which field either - micro architecture, high performance computing, UX, databases, PL, computational linguistics, you name it. Or hell, math has been around for a long time and you might not know planar graph algorithms off-hand unless you were really smart or had taken the course two months ago.

This whole debate is nutty. I personally would welcome as much strategic and intellectual diversity as possible onto teams I'm running. I wouldn't put all my eggs in one basket, either.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#752

Post by matfil » Thu, Feb 15, 2018, 7:56 AM UTC

samcodes wrote: post #743

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need titles like that at all. Let's change rockstar to MVP Developer, Ninja to Builder, Guru to Experienced Builder, and the 3rd type of developer described in GP to Maintenance Developer. I think the industry could go a long way if it admits that it needs all 4 of these types of developers, so that expectations were transparent for employees and needs are transparent for developers.

There are those who get it done RIGHT, and those who get it done RIGHT NOW.

Yes to both of these, but there are other options as well.

The frustrating ones are those who talk a good talk about "doing things right" (and, generally, talk a lot...), but then work on something for an age and come back with a solution that's objectively worse than the "RIGHT NOW" solution we've been using in the interim.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#753

Post by tajen » Thu, Feb 15, 2018, 8:36 AM UTC

laythea wrote: post #597

shabangcohen wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a woman currently applying/interviewing for a new grad role, I think you're definitely right about most companies caring only about current knowledge/skill.

Why is that bad? Jobs should be filled based on skill/knowledge. (The ability to learn is a skill too, one that means what you know currently matters less). I take slight offence to your statement. Why is being a woman relevant to anything, unless your company is going for 50/50 male female. But in my opinion that is wrong, and amounts to sex discrimination against men, because if 50% of roles are filled by men, even…

It is. Sex discrimination gone mad. All rich industries have it, IT was the latest bastion to conquer. Please join a group for men’s rights, we only get nothing because men never dare to stand up as a gender.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#754

Post by norlys » Thu, Feb 15, 2018, 9:02 AM UTC

laythea wrote: post #597

shabangcohen wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a woman currently applying/interviewing for a new grad role, I think you're definitely right about most companies caring only about current knowledge/skill.

Why is that bad? Jobs should be filled based on skill/knowledge. (The ability to learn is a skill too, one that means what you know currently matters less). I take slight offence to your statement. Why is being a woman relevant to anything, unless your company is going for 50/50 male female. But in my opinion that is wrong, and amounts to sex discrimination against men, because if 50% of roles are filled by men, even…

I think that a women quota is useful in cases where the proportion of female (one could also insert specific cultural backgrounds here) possible applicants for a role (be it junior or leader) is much higher than the proportion in the actual role. For instance, in theatres or hospitals in Germany, a large part of the employees is female whilst the bosses tend to be male. You cannot argue with "but better candidates will be turned down just because they are male" because obviously, the criteria for choosing are heavily unbalanced already. It's harder to determine whether a quota is useful in jobs the reason for not choosing women might be women not applying for the job. But we won't solve the matter by hating each other over the cause. Let's try to be critical, yet empathic.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#755

Post by coldtea » Thu, Feb 15, 2018, 9:48 AM UTC

bovermyer wrote: post #732

coldtea wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Building diversity is an important component of forward progress, since it engenders a broader experiential pool to draw from. Only the pool has to be created in the lower levels (education etc) not imposed at the company level with less good candidates favored just because of their sex. > Until such time as that happens, "sex discrimination against men" is impossible. It's very possible, if meritocracy is sidestep…

Gender is only one factor. It's what I focused on here because of context. Nationality, native language, childhood population density, and even hobby choices all play a part in experiential makeup. "Meritocracy" is almost always a flawed idea, because it relies on the principle of those in positions of authority choosing the best candidate for a given role; the key word here is "best." That's a subjective term, and u…

>"Meritocracy" is almost always a flawed idea, because it relies on the principle of those in positions of authority choosing the best candidate for a given role; the key word here is "best." That's a subjective term, and usually favors a small set of criteria over a more holistic view.

That's the whole idea. When you need a surgeon you don't need a specifically sexed, or colored, or whatever surgeon. You just need a person good at the "small set of criteria" of performing a surgery.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#756

Post by rplnt » Thu, Feb 15, 2018, 9:50 AM UTC

alien_at_work wrote: post #570

rplnt wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's 2. I don't see why senior dev salaries should go any higher. At that point it would be easier to open office overseas even for smaller shops.

>I don't see why senior dev salaries should go any higher Because they're vastly underpaid compared to the value they produce. >At that point it would be easier to open office overseas even for smaller shops. Which means you're getting junior devs, at best. The entire concept of outsourcing hangs on the idea that the people being outsourced to will behave exactly the opposite of those doing the outsourcing, i.e. not…

World doesn't work like that. You are not paid by the value you create, but by supply/demand for the position. The economics of the product only dictate whether something will be done or not.

And your second statement is not true. You simply get cheaper workforce in other countries. Even on senior levels.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#757

Post by expertentipp » Thu, Feb 15, 2018, 10:00 AM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #722

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 noticed this as well. The personal project that netted me my first job was really just a LAMP CRUD site for torrents. Not a single person would be impressed by that today.

> LAMP CRUD site for torrents

Impressed? Today that would result in an early morning police raid on your apartment.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#758

Post by moreless » Thu, Feb 15, 2018, 11:41 AM UTC

milesvp wrote: post #450

g051051 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do. But I'm still faster than them in head to head coding throughput (code produced, error counts, etc). I've got decades of experience in developing software. No way someone fresh out of college is going to equal, let alone out-code me. That's not to say they're not good, but the assertion: > can code not only "just as fast", but probably faster too! is pure BS.

I believe it. Though my experience is that junior devs can be much faster at producing lines of code, and most of it's junk. Senior devs will always be faster at producing bug free lines of code, and certainly at catching more of the edge cases. Moreover, the best devs I've worked with know when not to code at all to solve a problem, which is a totally foreign concept to junior devs who seem to prefer coding to think…

> dear god, how is there so much code that does nothing, and how did it all get witten since I last had a chance to look

This, 100 times over! It is simply incredible how much code and how complex systems a junior dev (junior by knowledge, not by years of coding) can produce in a short time while you were looking the other way... :-D

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#759

Post by g051051 » Thu, Feb 15, 2018, 12:48 PM UTC

xigency wrote: post #751

virgilp wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look. Aren't you spending time thinking? Do you imagine you think faster than everybody aged 23? Could you do an MSc at a top-level US university (in your primary domain of expertise) in a week? Because plenty of people (juniors by definition, almost all of them) can do it in 2 years, so if you're "100x" in the sense that you say you are, you should be able to do all that work in 1 week. At least that much should be…

Education is a good point. New algorithms are often found in academia that aren't exactly on Hacker News all of the time. It doesn't matter which field either - micro architecture, high performance computing, UX, databases, PL, computational linguistics, you name it. Or hell, math has been around for a long time and you might not know planar graph algorithms off-hand unless you were really smart or had taken the cour…

> I personally would welcome as much strategic and intellectual diversity as possible onto teams I'm running.

Me too. I just think the blanket assertion that a junior dev is the coding equal to a senior dev is what's nutty.

Re: Who Killed the Junior Developer?

#760

Post by bovermyer » Thu, Feb 15, 2018, 12:54 PM UTC

hailk wrote: post #750

bovermyer wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. But it's discrimination with a higher purpose.

I'd like to share a perspective based on an anecdote. The first company that I'd worked for had come to our college to hire interns. They wanted 2. I'd find out later that the CEO had intended one male hire and one female hire, but they ended up hiring 3 (all men) including me. Two of us that got hired were from financially poor background, had lived in tier 3 cities, went to underfunded-corrupt schools with bad educ…

This is probably the most reasoned counterargument I've seen here.

I'm going to step away and do some more reading on the subject before responding. Since this thread will likely be stale by then, I'll put up a blog post or similar with my updated thoughts.