4 ms·

I think there is some place for these not quite ready junior devs. I have worked at and with some dev agencies and there seems to be a lack of technical QA on m

I think there is some place for these not quite ready junior devs. I have worked at and with some dev agencies and there seems to be a lack of technical QA on majority of projects. My idea is to hire these devs that aren't ready to write code themselves, and have them do lots of technical QA. Pull down the code, run it on their machine, test all endpoints in Postman, write some simple scripts, etc. Then after several months doing that, give them a raise to move them closer to a dev salary and move them to active dev work. You get to 1. Hire devs at a big discount since they won't be doing dev work quite yet. 2. Get to work with them for several months before letting them get active on code. 3. Even with the raise post QA period, they would be at a below market rate for junior devs. Junior devs get 1. Experience in a technical position. 2. Opportunity to continue learning and see what it takes to build professional quality code. 3. On ramp to being a dev. Maybe I got the numbers wrong on this and it isn't feasible. But it seems like a good tradeoff for agencies to bring on devs. Because devs are crazy expensive in the US and agencies have a hard time bringing them in while staying profitable.

necrotic_comp 6y ago
This is a good sequence of events. Kind of what happened to me after I graduated from school - I didn't have much programming experience (my BS was essentially a math degree and I did it in < 2 years), so they hired me to answer phones, then from there I did level 1, then level 2, then releases, then level 3, then bugfixes and then I was finally granted the title of Dev. Has the benefit of making sure you know the cost of issues and outages, knowing how to spot bugs, and generally how to be a good citizen both with the dev teams and the rest of the company at large.
kthejoker2 6y ago
Yeah, I think the issue is telling a client with a straight face you're going to add a "not quite ready junior dev" to a project to QA your own work for the client and charge the client for the privilege (even at a "below market rate") is a bit ... off. And if you're doing it fixed-fee, then you really need to confirm that the QA is either accelerating delivery (and therefore reducing costs) so you can keep the price constant and collect more margin or ensuring a better (i.e. more valuable) outcome to the client to justify an increase in price in a fairly competitive bidding market.
908B64B197 6y ago
> You get to 1. Hire devs at a big discount since they won't be doing dev work quite yet. 2. Get to work with them for several months before letting them get active on code. 3. Even with the raise post QA period, they would be at a below market rate for junior devs. You'll pay every penny of the discount by wasting time tutoring them to the level of a real CS grad.

necrotic_comp 6y ago

This is a good sequence of events. Kind of what happened to me after I graduated from school - I didn't have much programming experience (my BS was essentially a math degree and I did it in < 2 years), so they hired me to answer phones, then from there I did level 1, then level 2, then releases, then level 3, then bugfixes and then I was finally granted the title of Dev. Has the benefit of making sure you know the cost of issues and outages, knowing how to spot bugs, and generally how to be a good citizen both with the dev teams and the rest of the company at large.

kthejoker2 6y ago

Yeah, I think the issue is telling a client with a straight face you're going to add a "not quite ready junior dev" to a project to QA your own work for the client and charge the client for the privilege (even at a "below market rate") is a bit ... off. And if you're doing it fixed-fee, then you really need to confirm that the QA is either accelerating delivery (and therefore reducing costs) so you can keep the price constant and collect more margin or ensuring a better (i.e. more valuable) outcome to the client to justify an increase in price in a fairly competitive bidding market.

908B64B197 6y ago

> You get to 1. Hire devs at a big discount since they won't be doing dev work quite yet. 2. Get to work with them for several months before letting them get active on code. 3. Even with the raise post QA period, they would be at a below market rate for junior devs. You'll pay every penny of the discount by wasting time tutoring them to the level of a real CS grad.