5 ms·

To go in line with firms not wanting to hire juniors, I think generally firms do not want to invest heavily in employee training or education. I would, for exam

To go in line with firms not wanting to hire juniors, I think generally firms do not want to invest heavily in employee training or education. I would, for example, happily make a shift from CRUD webdev and distributed networking to hardware and embedded and more lower level type work, but I doubt a firm would hire me near my current level and train me up.

aNoob7000 5y ago
I think you hit it on the nose. Companies don't want to invest in training their new hires. They just want someone to hit the ground running with as little hand holding as possible.
- ghaff 5y ago
  It doesn't help that, for a certain slice of the software industry, staying in a position for 18-24 months has almost been normed. If it's unlikely that your hire is going to be there for more than a couple of years, why on earth would you "invest" in them. It's not like you'll get a return on that investment.
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    And why would software engineers stay if you did invest in their training but in the meantime you're going to reduce or eliminate bonuses, make your health plan worse (or just plain switch to high-deductible with no PPO options), stop 401k matching, other key employees have left and you don't hire new people and instead dump that responsibility on someone else without promotion or raises, etc. I've seen all of those things happen at a single company before (and relatively quickly, over two years), and several of those things happen at several companies.
- jandrewrogers 5y ago
  This is often the case. Another factor is that in many of the areas with a persistent shortage of talent is that it would require 18-24 months of training to really become productive. That's a big investment and people tend to have short tenures at companies these days.
gmadsen 5y ago
which I think I'm fine with. I can learn skills on my own time. But I expect compensation to be commensurate with that
cwbrandsma 5y ago
that is true for firms that never hire juniors. For me, I have a small team, we can only absorb a small number of juniors at any given time, because I have to have people free enough to train them up. And now, having lost most my seniors in my team to attrition, I'm hiring more mid-level developers (and hoping to find seniors)
runevault 5y ago
The problem is likely that most people are willing to learn on the job, but then take that learning and go get a better job. A large portion of this problem is companies not being willing to increase pay to match the value you add by learning that skill, but it does lead to the doubt about bothering to train.
tsywke44 5y ago
Why would any company spend 2 years to train a junior, only for that junior to jump ship? Oh and it's not that easy to even find a "trainable" junior. Even if you have a fairly strict hiring process, at least 1/3rds of the people coming out of the edication system will be draft busts if using sports terms
- pavel_lishin 5y ago
  To answer your rhetorical question, because the alternative is spending five times as long trying to hire a senior engineer without the sort of budget that FAANGs have. And because it doesn't take a full two years before that junior is a valuable contributing member of the team; because they'll likely refer other qualified and/or educable applicants; because they might not jump ship, but be happy to get promoted if you actually reward them comparatively to what another company would pay them. But sure, if you're not willing to invest either time or money in your employees, then no, you shouldn't hire juniors.
  - shagie 5y ago
    Spending five times as long to hire a senior who doesn't leave in a year or two is then a much better situation. A junior dev hire involves sifting through many resumes, and then interviews, onboarding, and then three to six months of lower productivity for the mentor. All of that represents losses against the current status quo. The current status quo is predictable. This completely discounts the "accept and renege" that also is common with juniors looking for a job which can reset the job search back to square one even when you do find a good candidate. Taking six months or a year to hire a senior has fewer resumes to sort and fewer interviews to conduct. When the person is hired, they've got a much shorter onboarding and has the necessary skills to be able to become familiar with the codebase without causing a hit to the productivity of the rest of the team (or other seniors). In this situation, hiring a senior is likely a much better outcome with fewer seen and unforeseen negatives and an eventual positive.
    - pavel_lishin 5y ago
      > Spending five times as long to hire a senior who doesn't leave in a year or two is then a much better situation. yes - assuming the senior also doesn't leave.
nickff 5y ago
The problem is that nobody wants to pay you intermediate/senior salary for junior ability until you learn their field. More than that, even if you volunteer to take the pay cut, they may be afraid you'll jump ship quickly, or that it's just not worth the risk of doing something unconventional.

aNoob7000 5y ago

I think you hit it on the nose. Companies don't want to invest in training their new hires. They just want someone to hit the ground running with as little hand holding as possible.

ghaff 5y ago
It doesn't help that, for a certain slice of the software industry, staying in a position for 18-24 months has almost been normed. If it's unlikely that your hire is going to be there for more than a couple of years, why on earth would you "invest" in them. It's not like you'll get a return on that investment.
- cableshaft 5y ago
  And why would software engineers stay if you did invest in their training but in the meantime you're going to reduce or eliminate bonuses, make your health plan worse (or just plain switch to high-deductible with no PPO options), stop 401k matching, other key employees have left and you don't hire new people and instead dump that responsibility on someone else without promotion or raises, etc. I've seen all of those things happen at a single company before (and relatively quickly, over two years), and several of those things happen at several companies.
jandrewrogers 5y ago
This is often the case. Another factor is that in many of the areas with a persistent shortage of talent is that it would require 18-24 months of training to really become productive. That's a big investment and people tend to have short tenures at companies these days.

gmadsen 5y ago

which I think I'm fine with. I can learn skills on my own time. But I expect compensation to be commensurate with that

cwbrandsma 5y ago

that is true for firms that never hire juniors. For me, I have a small team, we can only absorb a small number of juniors at any given time, because I have to have people free enough to train them up. And now, having lost most my seniors in my team to attrition, I'm hiring more mid-level developers (and hoping to find seniors)

runevault 5y ago

The problem is likely that most people are willing to learn on the job, but then take that learning and go get a better job. A large portion of this problem is companies not being willing to increase pay to match the value you add by learning that skill, but it does lead to the doubt about bothering to train.

tsywke44 5y ago

Why would any company spend 2 years to train a junior, only for that junior to jump ship? Oh and it's not that easy to even find a "trainable" junior. Even if you have a fairly strict hiring process, at least 1/3rds of the people coming out of the edication system will be draft busts if using sports terms

pavel_lishin 5y ago
To answer your rhetorical question, because the alternative is spending five times as long trying to hire a senior engineer without the sort of budget that FAANGs have. And because it doesn't take a full two years before that junior is a valuable contributing member of the team; because they'll likely refer other qualified and/or educable applicants; because they might not jump ship, but be happy to get promoted if you actually reward them comparatively to what another company would pay them. But sure, if you're not willing to invest either time or money in your employees, then no, you shouldn't hire juniors.
- shagie 5y ago
  Spending five times as long to hire a senior who doesn't leave in a year or two is then a much better situation. A junior dev hire involves sifting through many resumes, and then interviews, onboarding, and then three to six months of lower productivity for the mentor. All of that represents losses against the current status quo. The current status quo is predictable. This completely discounts the "accept and renege" that also is common with juniors looking for a job which can reset the job search back to square one even when you do find a good candidate. Taking six months or a year to hire a senior has fewer resumes to sort and fewer interviews to conduct. When the person is hired, they've got a much shorter onboarding and has the necessary skills to be able to become familiar with the codebase without causing a hit to the productivity of the rest of the team (or other seniors). In this situation, hiring a senior is likely a much better outcome with fewer seen and unforeseen negatives and an eventual positive.
  - pavel_lishin 5y ago
    > Spending five times as long to hire a senior who doesn't leave in a year or two is then a much better situation. yes - assuming the senior also doesn't leave.

nickff 5y ago

The problem is that nobody wants to pay you intermediate/senior salary for junior ability until you learn their field. More than that, even if you volunteer to take the pay cut, they may be afraid you'll jump ship quickly, or that it's just not worth the risk of doing something unconventional.