4 ms·

> The rise of "Senior" and the decline of "Intern" I don't know anyone who has anything positive to say about hiring juniors and between it getting far harder

> The rise of "Senior" and the decline of "Intern" I don't know anyone who has anything positive to say about hiring juniors and between it getting far harder to wade through the avalanche of juniors with Coursera certs and AI making the easier work no longer require a human, I don't see a great future for them. Even in my first job 4 years ago, the senior manager there said in a meeting "we don't hire junior engineers as they are too much of a burden", which was news to new grad me who I guess slipped through an automated filter. Granted, they didn't have anyone else with less than 5 years of experience working there. It is going to be weird in a few years when the supply of more experienced devs has been throttled.

deleted 3y ago
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dbcurtis 3y ago
I wonder how much of that is basic economics? In a hot market, juniors get hired to fill a role with the idea that OJT will bring them up to speed soon enough to be better than an empty chair. When there are plenty of applicants, companies can be more selective. My advice to new grads: Internships!!! Think ahead and use a couple summers to prove yourself to one or two potential employers. Where I work, a lot of our NCG pipeline is intern-driven.
- MattGaiser 3y ago
  Internships are why new grad job ads can say 1+ years of experience or even 2+ years. The best candidates have that from summer internships + maybe a year-long internship (we called it a professional year at my school) or co-op.
xtracto 3y ago
Ooh, let me give you one data point on that. I've had great success hiring juniors. One was a WebDev "bootcamp" graduate lady; I was hesitant but bit the bullet, and it paid of well. It was good for the team and, as she was coming from a highly-exploitative industry (Hospitality Industry) she was super grateful with all the perks and benefits in the Software Dev industry (shit, she was just grateful she wasn't sexually harassed... that's the state of things in hotel jobs apparently). After that I hired another bootcamp graduate, Jr. guy with some mental handicap (sorry for my bad choice of words, English is not my first language). The dude had problems with oral communication; but given that we were a remote team, we had no problems communicating in writing through mail and slack. He was pretty good and passionate. And very grateful that we gave him the chance. I think he is still working in the company where I hired him :-) Finally, at my current startup I hired another Jr dev, recently graduated from Software Eng. During my interview time I saw he was heavily "opinionated" but also open to accept that he didn't know stuff. I love opinionated+humble people. He has been amazing in my current team. In my view, the problem with hiring Juniors is that a lot of times, companies are "lazy" in defining job openings. They want people that do everything and know everything. I compare it to the construction industry: As if someone hiring people to build a house wanted 30 architects/civil-engineer, and wouldnt want to hire lowly construction workers. The construction industry has matured enough to have very specific technical positions that can be filled by vast amount of workers. This is what I've done. I try to break my teams so that I can (at least initially) provide a Jr developer with very specific, small, digestible tasks. It makes it way cheaper for me. For example, I just recently hired a Jr. Frontend guy (just graduated) to work on Tooljet Dashboards. He was super happy to get the job, I could offer him around 40% more of what he was expecting, and I didn't have to ask a mid/sr level engineer to spend their time doing dashboards.
__turbobrew__ 3y ago
The issue is that hiring new grads only pays off if they stay for at least 3-4 years in my guestimation. If the new grad leaves before that timeframe they were most likely a net negative on the project/company and consumed more resources than they produced. Most new grads are desperate to get a job so they will take anything just to get experience so they can leave a year or two later for a company which they prefer, so unless you are google or facebook you are probably going to have issues retaining newgrads.

deleted 3y ago

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dbcurtis 3y ago

I wonder how much of that is basic economics? In a hot market, juniors get hired to fill a role with the idea that OJT will bring them up to speed soon enough to be better than an empty chair. When there are plenty of applicants, companies can be more selective. My advice to new grads: Internships!!! Think ahead and use a couple summers to prove yourself to one or two potential employers. Where I work, a lot of our NCG pipeline is intern-driven.

MattGaiser 3y ago
Internships are why new grad job ads can say 1+ years of experience or even 2+ years. The best candidates have that from summer internships + maybe a year-long internship (we called it a professional year at my school) or co-op.

xtracto 3y ago

Ooh, let me give you one data point on that. I've had great success hiring juniors. One was a WebDev "bootcamp" graduate lady; I was hesitant but bit the bullet, and it paid of well. It was good for the team and, as she was coming from a highly-exploitative industry (Hospitality Industry) she was super grateful with all the perks and benefits in the Software Dev industry (shit, she was just grateful she wasn't sexually harassed... that's the state of things in hotel jobs apparently). After that I hired another bootcamp graduate, Jr. guy with some mental handicap (sorry for my bad choice of words, English is not my first language). The dude had problems with oral communication; but given that we were a remote team, we had no problems communicating in writing through mail and slack. He was pretty good and passionate. And very grateful that we gave him the chance. I think he is still working in the company where I hired him :-) Finally, at my current startup I hired another Jr dev, recently graduated from Software Eng. During my interview time I saw he was heavily "opinionated" but also open to accept that he didn't know stuff. I love opinionated+humble people. He has been amazing in my current team. In my view, the problem with hiring Juniors is that a lot of times, companies are "lazy" in defining job openings. They want people that do everything and know everything. I compare it to the construction industry: As if someone hiring people to build a house wanted 30 architects/civil-engineer, and wouldnt want to hire lowly construction workers. The construction industry has matured enough to have very specific technical positions that can be filled by vast amount of workers. This is what I've done. I try to break my teams so that I can (at least initially) provide a Jr developer with very specific, small, digestible tasks. It makes it way cheaper for me. For example, I just recently hired a Jr. Frontend guy (just graduated) to work on Tooljet Dashboards. He was super happy to get the job, I could offer him around 40% more of what he was expecting, and I didn't have to ask a mid/sr level engineer to spend their time doing dashboards.

__turbobrew__ 3y ago

The issue is that hiring new grads only pays off if they stay for at least 3-4 years in my guestimation. If the new grad leaves before that timeframe they were most likely a net negative on the project/company and consumed more resources than they produced. Most new grads are desperate to get a job so they will take anything just to get experience so they can leave a year or two later for a company which they prefer, so unless you are google or facebook you are probably going to have issues retaining newgrads.