Ask HN: Lack of quality Junior Developers? Bad luck or an industry issue? • Hacker News Board

Post by trh88 » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

I have been working with a few Junior Developers recently, almost all out of coding bootcamps.

Now, I will say I have (what I think) are realistic expectations about what a Junior Developer is - little or no commercial experience and with often significant yet understandable (and forgivable) holes in knowledge.

However, the (majority of) Juniors that I have worked with of late seem to really lack a) common sense, b) problem solving ability, and c) curiosity to learn.

I have one Junior at the moment who literally copies and pastes every error message in the console and Slacks the whole chunk to me. No context. And waits for a reply. Sadly, this mentality seems to be more common than not. My default response to this is now that 'you can work this out for yourself' (am I being too harsh?).

Have I just had bad luck? Is there a general lack of good quality Junior Developers, or do I have unrealistic expectations of what a Junior is these days? Is this because of the fast-track nature of these bootcamps, or maybe even the "framework" culture that means you don't really need to understand what's going on under the hood most the time?

Would love to hear thoughts. I'm really keen to help Juniors, but I can't help but look back at when I was one and compare my peers ability to figure things out for themselves (is that not how you _really_ learn?).

Post by taylodl » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

Haven't working with developers from the coding bootcamps - we require all developers have a 4 year CS degree. Generally not seeing the problems you are. Don't know if that's a different between bootcamps and 4 year degrees or if it's just an anecdote. I do know that there are some people who simply have no problem-solving skills - and these are people having 4 year degrees. I haven't run across many of them but there have been a couple that are as you describe.

Since you're hiring so many people from coding bootcamps maybe you should try a different tactic: find out what they were doing before the bootcamp. Were they doing something that required analysis and problem-solving like an auto mechanic, handyman or plumber or something? Or were they doing non-analytical white collar work where you follow a set process? The former will make good developers, the latter, not so much. Heck, we hired a photocopier repair man who though he didn't have a 4 year CS degree, he did have 5 years experience in IT with another firm (the "or equivalent" clause) and he's been an awesome developer. Anecdotally speaking, I've noticed most developers who fix their own cars, do their own handyman work or simply worked in fields doing a lot of analysis and problem-solving are very good at being developers. It's the analysis and problem-solving skills you're after, the domain knowledge will come with time.

In a separate vein, if you're looking at people who have 4 year degrees and attended a bootcamp so they could find work, the 4 year degree is an indicator of their ability to analyze and problem solve. Mathematicians, engineers, and the hard sciences tend to be very good developer candidates, for example.

Good luck!