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What they don't get outside of Big Tech is that non-junior developers are (relative to the traditional pre-software 20th century industrial business model) more

What they don't get outside of Big Tech is that non-junior developers are (relative to the traditional pre-software 20th century industrial business model) more like managers than like line workers. It's just that the "workers" we manage are robots. But even a pretty low level developer is going to end up making important business decisions just incidentally as part of their job, because it's hard to specify out every little decision that could impact the business without basically doing the dev's job for them. Businesses can embrace that or they can ignore it at their peril.

DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
I find that any company that actually gives its college-hires the formal job-title "Junior Developer" is not a good place to work: I interpret it as saying they don't respect their own employees. YMMV.
- ckdot 4y ago
  How would you name them then? In my experience many companies tend to give all the developers senior statuses even though they are actually still quite juniorish. What’s wrong to be a Junior Developer?
  - DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
    I'd trim-off the "Junior" and leave it at that. For a formal job-title (as HR would demand) it's common to have Roman numerals appended, e.g. "SWE I" and "SWE II" before you get "Senior". The semantics is the same: "SWE I" == "Junior SWE" but without the unpleasant connotations that the term "Junior" specifically has, especially when you have older folks coming in at an entry-level (e.g. from coding-camps or a midlife career change) where referring to a 40something as "Junior" just feels weird. That's how it's done at all the US software companies I've worked at, including Microsoft and some startups. My current company does has done away with job-titles entirely and we make up whatever we want on our business-cards (within reason).
  - ckdot 4y ago
    Ok, seems like a good alternative. I didn’t know about it, in Germany it’s simply „Junior“ and „Senior“. If you are like a year or two in a company you usually are simply upgraded to „Senior“ no matter what. Even though I wouldn’t consider Junior offensive I like the system you describe much more.
marcosdumay 4y ago
What managers don't get is that almost all roles are like that. In fact, I'm wondering if that "almost" word should be there at all. Everybody organizes people, decide how work should be done, and has to make a lot of little decisions that nobody could anticipate. Not with the same leverage as developers, but with important consequences too. Somehow, management experts can't accept this.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  "No such thing as unskilled labor" really not something they can handle huh?
  - lazypenguin 4y ago
    I've come to believe that all labor is skilled, all that matters is how much training and/or experience is required to make them able to do the job that differs.
    - PeterisP 4y ago
      But that's kind of the point -all that matters is how much training and/or experience is required to make them able to do the job, but the differences can be quite large. We establish a difference between jobs where that training is relatively short (and thus we can expect it to happen on-site by the company who can hire people from other positions and have them do the new job) and the jobs where that training takes many years and thus requires significant pre-commitment and long-term planning to ensure that they can be filled. For the purposes of crude statistics we pick an arbitrary line and label the jobs with <1 year of job-specific training required (starting from generic knowledge e.g. highschool or a degree in some other field) as "unskilled" and >1 year job-specific training required as "skilled"; but the key point is that there is a substantial qualitative difference between roles where you can "swap" people from one industry to another, and roles where that doesn't make sense at scale - while some individuals do switch high-investment careers, you're not going to solve a pandemic-prelate doctor shortage by re-purposing excess lawyers, but in that same pandemic you can solve a delivery driver shortage by re-purposing excess cashiers. Similarly in IT, the jobs which can be done by putting someone through an x-week boot camp do need different treatment from managers and policy-makers than the tech jobs which do require much more training and/or experience.

DaiPlusPlus 4y ago

I find that any company that actually gives its college-hires the formal job-title "Junior Developer" is not a good place to work: I interpret it as saying they don't respect their own employees. YMMV.

ckdot 4y ago
How would you name them then? In my experience many companies tend to give all the developers senior statuses even though they are actually still quite juniorish. What’s wrong to be a Junior Developer?
- DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
  I'd trim-off the "Junior" and leave it at that. For a formal job-title (as HR would demand) it's common to have Roman numerals appended, e.g. "SWE I" and "SWE II" before you get "Senior". The semantics is the same: "SWE I" == "Junior SWE" but without the unpleasant connotations that the term "Junior" specifically has, especially when you have older folks coming in at an entry-level (e.g. from coding-camps or a midlife career change) where referring to a 40something as "Junior" just feels weird. That's how it's done at all the US software companies I've worked at, including Microsoft and some startups. My current company does has done away with job-titles entirely and we make up whatever we want on our business-cards (within reason).
- ckdot 4y ago
  Ok, seems like a good alternative. I didn’t know about it, in Germany it’s simply „Junior“ and „Senior“. If you are like a year or two in a company you usually are simply upgraded to „Senior“ no matter what. Even though I wouldn’t consider Junior offensive I like the system you describe much more.

marcosdumay 4y ago

What managers don't get is that almost all roles are like that. In fact, I'm wondering if that "almost" word should be there at all. Everybody organizes people, decide how work should be done, and has to make a lot of little decisions that nobody could anticipate. Not with the same leverage as developers, but with important consequences too. Somehow, management experts can't accept this.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
"No such thing as unskilled labor" really not something they can handle huh?
- lazypenguin 4y ago
  I've come to believe that all labor is skilled, all that matters is how much training and/or experience is required to make them able to do the job that differs.
  - PeterisP 4y ago
    But that's kind of the point -all that matters is how much training and/or experience is required to make them able to do the job, but the differences can be quite large. We establish a difference between jobs where that training is relatively short (and thus we can expect it to happen on-site by the company who can hire people from other positions and have them do the new job) and the jobs where that training takes many years and thus requires significant pre-commitment and long-term planning to ensure that they can be filled. For the purposes of crude statistics we pick an arbitrary line and label the jobs with <1 year of job-specific training required (starting from generic knowledge e.g. highschool or a degree in some other field) as "unskilled" and >1 year job-specific training required as "skilled"; but the key point is that there is a substantial qualitative difference between roles where you can "swap" people from one industry to another, and roles where that doesn't make sense at scale - while some individuals do switch high-investment careers, you're not going to solve a pandemic-prelate doctor shortage by re-purposing excess lawyers, but in that same pandemic you can solve a delivery driver shortage by re-purposing excess cashiers. Similarly in IT, the jobs which can be done by putting someone through an x-week boot camp do need different treatment from managers and policy-makers than the tech jobs which do require much more training and/or experience.