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The problem is that if everyone hops jobs every 9-18 months, it’s not worth training up juniors because the employer will never get to benefit. It seems that we

by nickff 1y ago

The problem is that if everyone hops jobs every 9-18 months, it’s not worth training up juniors because the employer will never get to benefit. It seems that we’re in an unfortunate, but stable equilibrium.

kogepathic 1y ago
> The problem is that if everyone hops jobs every 9-18 months, it’s not worth training up juniors because the employer will never get to benefit. It is absolutely worth hiring and training juniors. The quality of your onboarding process and documentation will improve. Not only that but a junior will ask questions that senior engineers take for granted, such as "why are we doing X this way?" which can lead to improvements that your existing engineers might not have considered. Finally, if junior engineers are joining your organisation and leaving every 9-18 months, you need to take a serious look at your career progression ladder and compensation. I have seen way too many companies that have an arbitrary "you cannot receive a promotion in the first X months" HR policy which is just asinine. You know who doesn't have this stupid policy? The company your junior just accepted an offer from. If your organisation doesn't have the tools and processes to up skill junior engineers into seniors, then it doesn't have professional development for senior engineers and is just a career dead end.
_heimdall 1y ago
Junior devs are just a time suck though. They do require more on boarding an attention than the average experienced hire, but they also bring a different view to the project. I've been surprised over the years by juniors that raise a question or idea that snowballs into a pretty fundament and impactful change, one that could have been raised before but the team just didn't look at it that way. We also have to remember that if our juniors leave 9-18 months later, everyone else's juniors are leaving too. Churn has a cost for sure, but if I can hire someone else's junior that they put 18 months into then I am still better off.
kelnos 1y ago
This has been the state of things long before LLMs, and companies still hired and trained up juniors, only to see them leave after 18 months. But that's fine. The junior you trained up will be more effective at their next job, and the junior your competitor trained up will be more effective when you hire them at your company. Again, that's how it's been for far longer than we've had LLMs.
- program_whiz 1y ago
  The only problem with this utopian view of the world is the game theory. My company which doesn't hire juniors gets to benefit from others training them up for free. As a result, companies will opt not to train them (since this is optimal) -- which means they don't get trained. Classic prisoner's dilemma / free rider situation.

by nickff 1y ago

kogepathic 1y ago

> The problem is that if everyone hops jobs every 9-18 months, it’s not worth training up juniors because the employer will never get to benefit. It is absolutely worth hiring and training juniors. The quality of your onboarding process and documentation will improve. Not only that but a junior will ask questions that senior engineers take for granted, such as "why are we doing X this way?" which can lead to improvements that your existing engineers might not have considered. Finally, if junior engineers are joining your organisation and leaving every 9-18 months, you need to take a serious look at your career progression ladder and compensation. I have seen way too many companies that have an arbitrary "you cannot receive a promotion in the first X months" HR policy which is just asinine. You know who doesn't have this stupid policy? The company your junior just accepted an offer from. If your organisation doesn't have the tools and processes to up skill junior engineers into seniors, then it doesn't have professional development for senior engineers and is just a career dead end.

_heimdall 1y ago

Junior devs are just a time suck though. They do require more on boarding an attention than the average experienced hire, but they also bring a different view to the project. I've been surprised over the years by juniors that raise a question or idea that snowballs into a pretty fundament and impactful change, one that could have been raised before but the team just didn't look at it that way. We also have to remember that if our juniors leave 9-18 months later, everyone else's juniors are leaving too. Churn has a cost for sure, but if I can hire someone else's junior that they put 18 months into then I am still better off.

kelnos 1y ago

This has been the state of things long before LLMs, and companies still hired and trained up juniors, only to see them leave after 18 months. But that's fine. The junior you trained up will be more effective at their next job, and the junior your competitor trained up will be more effective when you hire them at your company. Again, that's how it's been for far longer than we've had LLMs.

program_whiz 1y ago
The only problem with this utopian view of the world is the game theory. My company which doesn't hire juniors gets to benefit from others training them up for free. As a result, companies will opt not to train them (since this is optimal) -- which means they don't get trained. Classic prisoner's dilemma / free rider situation.