Speaking for myself, I am always open to hiring non-entry level juniors that demonstrate they can punch above their weight a bit. I have a philosophy of keeping

Speaking for myself, I am always open to hiring non-entry level juniors that demonstrate they can punch above their weight a bit. I have a philosophy of keeping the front end of our hiring funnel as wide as possible, my recruiting staff will screen almost anyone thats had at least one professional gig or an active github. And the folks that don't meet the experience expectations we have often still get a chance to show us what they can do if they check other boxes. But the frank reality is that the definition of "junior" has changed significantly compared to 5-10 years ago. The education options for becoming a software engineer have broadened dramatically. As a result, the barrier to entry for simply submitting a resume to any given req is much lower. And while this is manifestly a great thing for inclusivity outcomes, it has disproportionately worse impact on the signal-to-noise ratio in the hiring funnel. I think many orgs are still in the process of evaluating their risk tolerance for bringing on unproven talent. I do think _some_ risk is warranted, but its very easy over time to accidentally index too far in either direction.