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This is bogus. Every week I'm interviewing a handful of people for internships and junior roles. This is also simply not true: > top companies (big tech, high

This is bogus. Every week I'm interviewing a handful of people for internships and junior roles. This is also simply not true: > top companies (big tech, high growth startups) figure out that they don't really need to hire a lot of junior developers, they'll just hire the best seniors from other companies Not only it is insanely hard to hire senior devs, but also this doesn't make sense. We have plenty of work to go around and not all of it is at the senior scope. There is always room in big tech to hire and train juniors.

joe-collins 5y ago
Maybe I've been looking at the wrong companies, then. It seems like the majority of openings are looking for formal educational attainment or years of on-the-job experience that, as a self-taught programmer paying bills via a different field, I simply don't have.
- ummonk 5y ago
  If you can make it work, I'd recommend going the bootcamp route (with a bootcamp that pays a stipend and uses an income share agreement).
- rmbyrro 5y ago
  Don't be afraid of applying. If they find you a good problem solver, who is eager to learn, is humble and has reasonable cognitive skills, many companies may decide to extend an offer, even if they don't have an opening exactly to your profile at the moment. I've seen this happen with friends of mine applying remotely during the pandemic.
jnwatson 5y ago
The vast majority of dev jobs are outside “big tech, high growth startups”. FAANGs can’t train nearly enough juniors to make up for the rest of the industry.
- dasil003 5y ago
  Also a surprisingly non-trivial number of FAANG engineers can’t operate without the world class tooling and technical leadership support they get inside those companies.
  - Frost1x 5y ago
    This is a highly overlooked point. In these massive developer organizations, you're able to focus more and more on the core of your profession and have to deal less and less with catchall technical tasks. The scope of work is very different and you can't expect the skillsets working in a startup to be applicable to those in tech giants and vice versa. Tech has an issue where only a handful of titles try to cover a massive diversity of actual skillsets. I'm not entirely sure if this is good or bad but it at least leads to significant confusion when assessing someone's abilities. Not all SEs are the same in terms of their focuses, there are lots of flavors in reality.
quantified 5y ago
I see so many job postings for “fresh grad” roles. I interpret them as “we’re not going to pay very much, so take your senior skills elsewhere”. Current company hires a lot of fresh grads and interns, not always a good staffing decision for the projects since they need a lot of mentoring. Are we about to start swinging back to the “nobody hires really experienced devs because they’re too old/expensive” discussion soon?
jopsen 5y ago
> There is always room in big tech to hire and train juniors. Am many big companies knows that if you don't, then you won't have senior engineers with expertise in your stack.
jdavis703 5y ago
At least half, maybe the majority of our engineers are junior. We do reject the majority of applicants however. That’s usually because of a bad resume (seriously, not everyone can land a SWE internship, but at least show food service experience or something). In the interviews, many candidates either lack basic coding or problem solving skills. I don’t even ask leetcode questions, and only a minority of folks can answer them (and I allow them to look up reference material online).
- mattlondon 5y ago
  For a junior, "unrelated" work experience all counts IMHO. You can't ding some just starting out in a first role because they haven't already had a job other than flipping burgers. At least someone with unrelated experience has shown that they have some experience of holding down a job and the responsibility that goes with it, and can apply themselves doing something mindless if they have to (most intern or junior candidates I interview these days all want to solve cancer with machine learning on day 1 in their role - someone without a real-world reality-check who has only done a series of silver-spoon elite internships might get disgruntled when they are given the shit work as a junior) Likewise some people cannot afford internships - they need to get paying work to pay bills and can't have the luxury of doing unpaid/expenses-only/etc work, or have other reasons like care responsibilities etc. With respect, please check your biases and give people a chance. </manager at a BigCo that also rejects huge numbers of applicants>
  - curiousllama 5y ago
    I’m pretty sure that comment is saying the red flag is NOT having an unrelated job (given they don’t have tech experience, which many understandably won’t). Def ambiguous tho
    - jdavis703 5y ago
      Yeah that’s what I meant. You need some sort of work experience. Flipping burgers, doing tech support or a SWE intern. Having no experience is the red flag.
01100011 5y ago
Yep. The FANG I work at now mostly hires out of school. The schools generally tend to be the ones existing engineers came from(not your typical Ivy leagues or big names) but we do mix it up. Previously I worked at a small but growing defense contractor and they also hired Jr's and recent grads. It's a big world though, and I can't say my small sample of it is representative of the bigger whole.
dboreham 5y ago
Also came here to call BS : around 1/2 of the developers I work with are junior. Provided they are smart and willing to take direction, the more the merrier. Software is different than most other professions in this respect because a junior practitioner is able to demonstrate ability without a professional job (try that as a junior neurosurgeon).
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
  Don't you end up with a lot of cleanup work to do?

joe-collins 5y ago

Maybe I've been looking at the wrong companies, then. It seems like the majority of openings are looking for formal educational attainment or years of on-the-job experience that, as a self-taught programmer paying bills via a different field, I simply don't have.

ummonk 5y ago
If you can make it work, I'd recommend going the bootcamp route (with a bootcamp that pays a stipend and uses an income share agreement).
rmbyrro 5y ago
Don't be afraid of applying. If they find you a good problem solver, who is eager to learn, is humble and has reasonable cognitive skills, many companies may decide to extend an offer, even if they don't have an opening exactly to your profile at the moment. I've seen this happen with friends of mine applying remotely during the pandemic.

jnwatson 5y ago

The vast majority of dev jobs are outside “big tech, high growth startups”. FAANGs can’t train nearly enough juniors to make up for the rest of the industry.

dasil003 5y ago
Also a surprisingly non-trivial number of FAANG engineers can’t operate without the world class tooling and technical leadership support they get inside those companies.
- Frost1x 5y ago
  This is a highly overlooked point. In these massive developer organizations, you're able to focus more and more on the core of your profession and have to deal less and less with catchall technical tasks. The scope of work is very different and you can't expect the skillsets working in a startup to be applicable to those in tech giants and vice versa. Tech has an issue where only a handful of titles try to cover a massive diversity of actual skillsets. I'm not entirely sure if this is good or bad but it at least leads to significant confusion when assessing someone's abilities. Not all SEs are the same in terms of their focuses, there are lots of flavors in reality.

quantified 5y ago

I see so many job postings for “fresh grad” roles. I interpret them as “we’re not going to pay very much, so take your senior skills elsewhere”. Current company hires a lot of fresh grads and interns, not always a good staffing decision for the projects since they need a lot of mentoring. Are we about to start swinging back to the “nobody hires really experienced devs because they’re too old/expensive” discussion soon?

jopsen 5y ago

> There is always room in big tech to hire and train juniors. Am many big companies knows that if you don't, then you won't have senior engineers with expertise in your stack.

jdavis703 5y ago

At least half, maybe the majority of our engineers are junior. We do reject the majority of applicants however. That’s usually because of a bad resume (seriously, not everyone can land a SWE internship, but at least show food service experience or something). In the interviews, many candidates either lack basic coding or problem solving skills. I don’t even ask leetcode questions, and only a minority of folks can answer them (and I allow them to look up reference material online).

mattlondon 5y ago
For a junior, "unrelated" work experience all counts IMHO. You can't ding some just starting out in a first role because they haven't already had a job other than flipping burgers. At least someone with unrelated experience has shown that they have some experience of holding down a job and the responsibility that goes with it, and can apply themselves doing something mindless if they have to (most intern or junior candidates I interview these days all want to solve cancer with machine learning on day 1 in their role - someone without a real-world reality-check who has only done a series of silver-spoon elite internships might get disgruntled when they are given the shit work as a junior) Likewise some people cannot afford internships - they need to get paying work to pay bills and can't have the luxury of doing unpaid/expenses-only/etc work, or have other reasons like care responsibilities etc. With respect, please check your biases and give people a chance. </manager at a BigCo that also rejects huge numbers of applicants>
- curiousllama 5y ago
  I’m pretty sure that comment is saying the red flag is NOT having an unrelated job (given they don’t have tech experience, which many understandably won’t). Def ambiguous tho
  - jdavis703 5y ago
    Yeah that’s what I meant. You need some sort of work experience. Flipping burgers, doing tech support or a SWE intern. Having no experience is the red flag.

01100011 5y ago

Yep. The FANG I work at now mostly hires out of school. The schools generally tend to be the ones existing engineers came from(not your typical Ivy leagues or big names) but we do mix it up. Previously I worked at a small but growing defense contractor and they also hired Jr's and recent grads. It's a big world though, and I can't say my small sample of it is representative of the bigger whole.

dboreham 5y ago

Also came here to call BS : around 1/2 of the developers I work with are junior. Provided they are smart and willing to take direction, the more the merrier. Software is different than most other professions in this respect because a junior practitioner is able to demonstrate ability without a professional job (try that as a junior neurosurgeon).

Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
Don't you end up with a lot of cleanup work to do?