4 ms·

Of course this comes down to what you consider "junior" and the particulars of your company. Only the largest organizations with stable income can afford to te

Of course this comes down to what you consider "junior" and the particulars of your company. Only the largest organizations with stable income can afford to teach people how to do their job. That's not a sensible path for any business burning runway. There are plenty of recent grads out there who already know how to build software, will work for cheap, and will grow faster than the business increases their salary. That has historically been the selling point for "junior" devs. The opposite is true of hiring senior devs. Many of them will not have learned enough to justify the premium that they demand in the market. They entered the workforce sooner, but that's about it. Like "value investing" this is "value hiring", go long on people who are undervalued by the market, go short on people who are overvalued by the market. This is what the best hiring managers do.

heavenlyblue 2y ago
> The opposite is true of hiring senior devs. Many of them will not have learned enough to justify the premium that they demand in the market. They entered the workforce sooner, but that's about it. Senior dev is about skill mot time in industry
ang_cire 2y ago
> Only the largest organizations with stable income can afford to teach people how to do their job. Sure, you can't take someone who's never programmed anything before and train them on the job in a startup... but you can't do that in a large company either. But every company has small tasks and spikes that they can hand to junior employees. If not, the startup is probably not breaking down the work very efficiently. My first job as an engineer, I joined a mid-sized startup with around 150 people. My team had 8 people including me. I was very much a junior engineer (if not entry-level for that role) at that time, but I was given tasks that fit my experience level, as well as leeway to branch out into more challenging projects. Moved from junior role to mid-level, and then on to senior (7+ years later, of course). That company had very low turnover, because people saw the company investing in their growth (and I don't mean paying for training, I mean actively nurturing their skills in their work). Companies who want to hire only mid-level workers or up will likely find the mid-levels bogged down with all the little tasks that junior workers could be handling for them. That makes the mid-levels less productive, which is the worse thing for a startup to be.
SoftTalker 2y ago
"There are plenty of recent grads out there who already know how to build software" I would say this is true if you define "plenty" to mean "very few."

heavenlyblue 2y ago

> The opposite is true of hiring senior devs. Many of them will not have learned enough to justify the premium that they demand in the market. They entered the workforce sooner, but that's about it. Senior dev is about skill mot time in industry

ang_cire 2y ago

> Only the largest organizations with stable income can afford to teach people how to do their job. Sure, you can't take someone who's never programmed anything before and train them on the job in a startup... but you can't do that in a large company either. But every company has small tasks and spikes that they can hand to junior employees. If not, the startup is probably not breaking down the work very efficiently. My first job as an engineer, I joined a mid-sized startup with around 150 people. My team had 8 people including me. I was very much a junior engineer (if not entry-level for that role) at that time, but I was given tasks that fit my experience level, as well as leeway to branch out into more challenging projects. Moved from junior role to mid-level, and then on to senior (7+ years later, of course). That company had very low turnover, because people saw the company investing in their growth (and I don't mean paying for training, I mean actively nurturing their skills in their work). Companies who want to hire only mid-level workers or up will likely find the mid-levels bogged down with all the little tasks that junior workers could be handling for them. That makes the mid-levels less productive, which is the worse thing for a startup to be.

SoftTalker 2y ago

"There are plenty of recent grads out there who already know how to build software" I would say this is true if you define "plenty" to mean "very few."