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I suspect this junior hiring crisis thing is linked to the ridiculous hoops people are put through to get a job these days. When I was starting, you were check

I suspect this junior hiring crisis thing is linked to the ridiculous hoops people are put through to get a job these days. When I was starting, you were checked for potential as a trainee. In my case, options trading. They checked over that you could do some mental arithmetic, and that you had a superficial idea of what trading was about. Along with a degree from a fancy university, that was all that was needed. I didn't know much about coding, and I didn't know much about stochastic differential equations. A couple of weeks ago, a young guy contacted me about his interview with an options trading firm. This guy had spent half a year learning every stat/prob trick question ever. All those game theory questions about monks with stickers on their foreheads, all the questions about which card do you need to turn over, the lot. The guy could code, and had learned a bunch of ML to go with it. He prepared for their trading game with some really great questions to me about bet sizing. I was convinced he was simply overly nervous about his prospects, because I'd never met someone so well prepared. Didn't get the job. Now I can assure you, he could have done the job. But apparently, firms want to hire people who are nearly fully developed on their own dime. When they get their analyst class, I guess there is going to be nobody who can't write async python. Everyone will know how to train an ML on a massive dataset, everyone will already know how to cut latency in the system. All things that I managed to learn while being paid. You gotta ask yourself whether we really want a society where people have to already know the job before they get their first job. Where everyone is like a doctor: already decided at age 16 that this was the path they wanted to follow, choosing classes towards that goal, and sticking with it until well into adulthood. And they have to essentially pay to get this job, because it comes at at cost of exploring other things (as well as actual money to live).

supportengineer 11mo ago
I feel like only the biggest companies can afford to put up all these roadblocks to employment. A smaller size company, perhaps in a lower COL city, might have a more "human" side to them, simply because they can't afford all the nonsense.
- johnnyanmac 11mo ago
  Sadly, tarriffs are making those companies scared at best and defunct at worst, so they also aren't hiring.
beezlebroxxxxxx 11mo ago
> You gotta ask yourself whether we really want a society where people have to already know the job before they get their first job. Where everyone is like a doctor: already decided at age 16 that this was the path they wanted to follow, choosing classes towards that goal, and sticking with it until well into adulthood. And they have to essentially pay to get this job, because it comes at at cost of exploring other things (as well as actual money to live). With the way higher-ed works in the US, and the way certain schools opportunity hoard to an insane degree, that is effectively already the case for whole industries and has been so for decades at this point. It's practically an open secret that getting into some schools is the golden ticket rather than the grades you earn while there. Many top schools are just networking and finishing schools for whole "elite" industries.
ashwindharne 11mo ago
I've found that this phenomenon exacerbates inequality too: If you attend a well-known college that bigco's hire from frequently, there's a lot of knowledge floating around about interview prep, hiring schedules, which companies pay the best, etc. Clubs host "interview prep workshops" where they'd teach the subject matter of interviews, host events(hackathons, case competitions, etc.) to help you bolster your resume for applying to these bigco's. So just by attending a better/fancier school, you'd have pretty decent odds of eventually getting a job at one of these prestigious places. If you were to attend a less prestigious school, regardless of your aptitude or capability, the information asymmetry is so bad that you'll never learn of the prerequisites for even being considered for some of these roles. Not many upperclassmen will have interned at fancy employers, so they won't be there to help you drill dynamic programming/black-scholes/lbo models, and won't tell you that you need to have your applications prepped by a certain date, and won't tell you that you should be working on side projects/clubs, etc. I suppose that the apprenticeship model biases towards people that already have connections, so perhaps inequality was already bad, whereas now we just have an information asymmetry that's more easily solvable.
asdfman123 11mo ago
This is the replacement for credentialism, love it or hate it. You don't need a fancy school to get into a top firm anymore. You have to master the hell out of the interview.
- johnnyanmac 11mo ago
  no point mastering an interview you're never even invited to because you lack connections or can't get past the ATS.
linsomniac 11mo ago
>ridiculous hoops people are put through to get a job these days I'm sure that's true in some areas, but our last hire I was shocked at the ridiculous lengths the applications would go to to avoid putting in even a minimum effort to apply for the job. Like the Van Halen brown M&M test, we put a line in the middle of the job advert saying "If you've read this, put your favorite color in at the top of your job application message. We had low double digits % of people who would do that. Honestly, on our next hiring round, I think I'm going to make people fill out a google form to apply, and have any of our job posts say "Apply at <URL>" and completely ignoring any apps we get through Indeed or the like. We had a team of 3 people reviewing applications for an hour or two a day for a month and most of the responses were just human slop.
- kalinkochnev 11mo ago
  As a new college grad I might be able to add some insight. We're stuck in a stalemate where the sheer volume of applications for employers to handle and applicants to send makes them take shortcuts, leaving both sides wonder why people aren't trying. If somebody has to send in 300-500 applications (which is not unheard of) and answer the same questions till they go blind, it's not surprising that certain things are missing or people don't care. Applicants don't have any reason to believe their info isn't thrown in the trash by an LLM as soon as it is sent. Lazy people will always be a problem but until there is transparency or trust developed I doubt we will see meaningful change.
  - linsomniac 11mo ago
    >Applicants don't have any reason to believe their info isn't thrown in the trash by an LLM as soon as it is sent. That's leading to an escalation where because applicants believe their apps are just getting fed to the LLMs, employers have to use an LLM. ;-/
    - venturecruelty 11mo ago
      Look at the power dynamics then. Who has more power in this situation: people with rent and mortgages? Or companies with more money than God? Companies could simply stop using LLMs and tomorrow and be fine. They brag about laying off thousands while turning record profits; they can turn off the slop machines. Let's not blame the people with no power in this situation.
zelphirkalt 11mo ago
Currently, it is not just juniors. It is people of all seniorities, who have to jump through ridiculous hoops, to be believed, that they are any good. Built most of the software of a company where I worked for 7y from humble beginnings to >80 people. Still gotta line up for a 4h on-site assessment! Built tons of free time projects, some more complex than anything one would usually build on the job. Still gotta have live coding interviews and no one can be arsed to even check my publicly available repos...
- Akronymus 11mo ago
  I'd say that "normal" (notjunior, not senior) level people have the hardest time ATM. Most jobs are either for juniors or seniors, not inbetween (anecdotal data from my experience job hunting for the last year in austria)
NatTheBat 11mo ago
Some hiring managers prioritize technical skill but its only one part of whether the interviewers "like" a candidate. There are infinite reasons someone can get turned down and only some of them are skill related.
johnnyanmac 11mo ago
>You gotta ask yourself whether we really want a society where people have to already know the job before they get their first job That'd be fine... meanwhile, the new loop we come into: - okay, so what does your company need and do Company: "that's under NDA/trade secrets, we can't tell you" - okay. we can't see what you want to you'll have to train them Company: "we don't want to train people, they just need to hit the ground running" - okay. we'll just let colleges train the fundamentals and have others figure it out Company: "no one's training anyone anymore. Where did the juniors go?" Even doctors have apprenticeship programs. An industry where no one wants to train the next generation is a doomed one. If the US doesn't do it, some other country will gladly take it up.
sevenseacat 11mo ago
I'm pretty sure that if I was interviewing for my current job at my current company now, I wouldn't get it.
bradlys 11mo ago
Haven’t seen anyone mention this but this is how it works in China. You have to study the same thing since you were 16 and completely ace it. If you decide during or after college that you don’t like the job path you chose (or really your parents chose) as a teenager then too bad. You’re locked into it for life or you’re stuck with never getting a job because the job market in China for young people is so horrendous. (Much higher youth unemployment rate) They have terrible interviews there as well that go much deeper than here. They’ll analyze your family - not just you. This is just a symptom of a really bad economy. That’s what the US is in right now. China’s youth are suffering from this as well.

supportengineer 11mo ago

I feel like only the biggest companies can afford to put up all these roadblocks to employment. A smaller size company, perhaps in a lower COL city, might have a more "human" side to them, simply because they can't afford all the nonsense.

johnnyanmac 11mo ago
Sadly, tarriffs are making those companies scared at best and defunct at worst, so they also aren't hiring.

beezlebroxxxxxx 11mo ago

> You gotta ask yourself whether we really want a society where people have to already know the job before they get their first job. Where everyone is like a doctor: already decided at age 16 that this was the path they wanted to follow, choosing classes towards that goal, and sticking with it until well into adulthood. And they have to essentially pay to get this job, because it comes at at cost of exploring other things (as well as actual money to live). With the way higher-ed works in the US, and the way certain schools opportunity hoard to an insane degree, that is effectively already the case for whole industries and has been so for decades at this point. It's practically an open secret that getting into some schools is the golden ticket rather than the grades you earn while there. Many top schools are just networking and finishing schools for whole "elite" industries.

ashwindharne 11mo ago

I've found that this phenomenon exacerbates inequality too: If you attend a well-known college that bigco's hire from frequently, there's a lot of knowledge floating around about interview prep, hiring schedules, which companies pay the best, etc. Clubs host "interview prep workshops" where they'd teach the subject matter of interviews, host events(hackathons, case competitions, etc.) to help you bolster your resume for applying to these bigco's. So just by attending a better/fancier school, you'd have pretty decent odds of eventually getting a job at one of these prestigious places. If you were to attend a less prestigious school, regardless of your aptitude or capability, the information asymmetry is so bad that you'll never learn of the prerequisites for even being considered for some of these roles. Not many upperclassmen will have interned at fancy employers, so they won't be there to help you drill dynamic programming/black-scholes/lbo models, and won't tell you that you need to have your applications prepped by a certain date, and won't tell you that you should be working on side projects/clubs, etc. I suppose that the apprenticeship model biases towards people that already have connections, so perhaps inequality was already bad, whereas now we just have an information asymmetry that's more easily solvable.

asdfman123 11mo ago

This is the replacement for credentialism, love it or hate it. You don't need a fancy school to get into a top firm anymore. You have to master the hell out of the interview.

johnnyanmac 11mo ago
no point mastering an interview you're never even invited to because you lack connections or can't get past the ATS.

linsomniac 11mo ago

>ridiculous hoops people are put through to get a job these days I'm sure that's true in some areas, but our last hire I was shocked at the ridiculous lengths the applications would go to to avoid putting in even a minimum effort to apply for the job. Like the Van Halen brown M&M test, we put a line in the middle of the job advert saying "If you've read this, put your favorite color in at the top of your job application message. We had low double digits % of people who would do that. Honestly, on our next hiring round, I think I'm going to make people fill out a google form to apply, and have any of our job posts say "Apply at <URL>" and completely ignoring any apps we get through Indeed or the like. We had a team of 3 people reviewing applications for an hour or two a day for a month and most of the responses were just human slop.

kalinkochnev 11mo ago
As a new college grad I might be able to add some insight. We're stuck in a stalemate where the sheer volume of applications for employers to handle and applicants to send makes them take shortcuts, leaving both sides wonder why people aren't trying. If somebody has to send in 300-500 applications (which is not unheard of) and answer the same questions till they go blind, it's not surprising that certain things are missing or people don't care. Applicants don't have any reason to believe their info isn't thrown in the trash by an LLM as soon as it is sent. Lazy people will always be a problem but until there is transparency or trust developed I doubt we will see meaningful change.
- linsomniac 11mo ago
  >Applicants don't have any reason to believe their info isn't thrown in the trash by an LLM as soon as it is sent. That's leading to an escalation where because applicants believe their apps are just getting fed to the LLMs, employers have to use an LLM. ;-/
  - venturecruelty 11mo ago
    Look at the power dynamics then. Who has more power in this situation: people with rent and mortgages? Or companies with more money than God? Companies could simply stop using LLMs and tomorrow and be fine. They brag about laying off thousands while turning record profits; they can turn off the slop machines. Let's not blame the people with no power in this situation.

zelphirkalt 11mo ago

Currently, it is not just juniors. It is people of all seniorities, who have to jump through ridiculous hoops, to be believed, that they are any good. Built most of the software of a company where I worked for 7y from humble beginnings to >80 people. Still gotta line up for a 4h on-site assessment! Built tons of free time projects, some more complex than anything one would usually build on the job. Still gotta have live coding interviews and no one can be arsed to even check my publicly available repos...

Akronymus 11mo ago
I'd say that "normal" (notjunior, not senior) level people have the hardest time ATM. Most jobs are either for juniors or seniors, not inbetween (anecdotal data from my experience job hunting for the last year in austria)

NatTheBat 11mo ago

Some hiring managers prioritize technical skill but its only one part of whether the interviewers "like" a candidate. There are infinite reasons someone can get turned down and only some of them are skill related.

johnnyanmac 11mo ago

>You gotta ask yourself whether we really want a society where people have to already know the job before they get their first job That'd be fine... meanwhile, the new loop we come into: - okay, so what does your company need and do Company: "that's under NDA/trade secrets, we can't tell you" - okay. we can't see what you want to you'll have to train them Company: "we don't want to train people, they just need to hit the ground running" - okay. we'll just let colleges train the fundamentals and have others figure it out Company: "no one's training anyone anymore. Where did the juniors go?" Even doctors have apprenticeship programs. An industry where no one wants to train the next generation is a doomed one. If the US doesn't do it, some other country will gladly take it up.

sevenseacat 11mo ago

I'm pretty sure that if I was interviewing for my current job at my current company now, I wouldn't get it.

bradlys 11mo ago

Haven’t seen anyone mention this but this is how it works in China. You have to study the same thing since you were 16 and completely ace it. If you decide during or after college that you don’t like the job path you chose (or really your parents chose) as a teenager then too bad. You’re locked into it for life or you’re stuck with never getting a job because the job market in China for young people is so horrendous. (Much higher youth unemployment rate) They have terrible interviews there as well that go much deeper than here. They’ll analyze your family - not just you. This is just a symptom of a really bad economy. That’s what the US is in right now. China’s youth are suffering from this as well.