4 ms·

I don't get why companies can't just hire a bunch of more "questionable" applicants at a lower rate, say $45k - $60k or so for junior devs in most cities. No n

I don't get why companies can't just hire a bunch of more "questionable" applicants at a lower rate, say $45k - $60k or so for junior devs in most cities. No need to spend much effort on the interview process, just make sure they can solve a couple standardized problems, and then "hire" them as contractors for a 90-day trial. Put them onto teams and throw them in the deep end, then get rid of all the ones who can't swim, which will probably be like 75%. But you'll also find quite a few unexpected gems that way. I mean, that's exactly what we did in Call Center management and it worked great. Hired people at $10 / hour for the first 90 days, then a $2 raise up to $12. We did have super high attrition for brand new employees (since we didn't technically do a contracting period,) but who really cares. We just kept on filtering and eventually had dozens of shockingly intelligent and competent call center employees for like, $13 / hour. (This was in the Midwest.)

HeroOfAges 9y ago
Quite a few companies are doing exactly what you describe to fill dev positions. The real cost comes when the systems designed and built by those junior devs are so brittle it becomes very time consuming and expensive to add new features. Most of the time, however, those systems built by the junior devs are so buggy there's no time to build new features in any case because everyone is too busy dealing with issues in prod.
- notyourday 9y ago
  That's because these companies management loves to develop by committee that comes with agilie, points, IPMs and standups. When a voice of expert is assigned the same weight as the voice of a Joe Random Developer and there are more Joe Random Developers than experts, you end up with garbage fire of systems.
- sidlls 9y ago
  It isn't just junior devs. It's also senior ones with a sophisticated grasp of CS trivia and little expertise outside of it.
ethan_g 9y ago
I think a lot of firms already do something like that through internship programs.
EliRivers 9y ago
I don't know how it is in your business, but if I was given a new batch of team members every 90 days in the expectation that 75% of them would be gone in three months, I would also be gone in three months.

HeroOfAges 9y ago

Quite a few companies are doing exactly what you describe to fill dev positions. The real cost comes when the systems designed and built by those junior devs are so brittle it becomes very time consuming and expensive to add new features. Most of the time, however, those systems built by the junior devs are so buggy there's no time to build new features in any case because everyone is too busy dealing with issues in prod.

notyourday 9y ago
That's because these companies management loves to develop by committee that comes with agilie, points, IPMs and standups. When a voice of expert is assigned the same weight as the voice of a Joe Random Developer and there are more Joe Random Developers than experts, you end up with garbage fire of systems.
sidlls 9y ago
It isn't just junior devs. It's also senior ones with a sophisticated grasp of CS trivia and little expertise outside of it.

ethan_g 9y ago

I think a lot of firms already do something like that through internship programs.

EliRivers 9y ago

I don't know how it is in your business, but if I was given a new batch of team members every 90 days in the expectation that 75% of them would be gone in three months, I would also be gone in three months.