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> More than that, our industry values wicked smart young guys fresh out of university. I do wonder if most of their value comes not from their brains but from

by tbrake 11y ago

> More than that, our industry values wicked smart young guys fresh out of university. I do wonder if most of their value comes not from their brains but from their pliability and capacity to be overworked?

derefr 11y ago
Summarizing some of Michael O. Church's screeds on the topic (https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com), I would say that the value of fresh graduate developers comes mostly in how much they undervalue themselves, and therefore how much excess generated value can be "skimmed off" by the company. A software consulting firm, after all, is usually a bunch of fresh grads headed by one "architect" with experience. Most of the work is done by, and most of the decisions are made by, the fresh grads, but the work is being billed at a rate that assumes the senior "figurehead" developer, and others like him, are doing the work. (This is also true in law, finance, advertising...) Or, in other words: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/02/robin-hansons-theory-of-young-consultants.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/02/rob...
Retric 11y ago
That's part of it, but I also find recent grads tend to be useless on the hard/fun parts of development, but great for the tedious crap. Sure, with a lot of supervision interns can fill the same tasks, but recent grads tend to stick around for much longer. There is also a huge nebulous gap after that where cost and talent is not that closely connected. You can have two people with similar resumes where one is worth 200+$/hour and the other is barely better than an intern. Worse this can get very project specific. People that do great things for one project can bomb another that's superficially similar. Recent grads may be of near universally low quality, but it's predictably bad.

by tbrake 11y ago

derefr 11y ago

Summarizing some of Michael O. Church's screeds on the topic (https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com), I would say that the value of fresh graduate developers comes mostly in how much they undervalue themselves, and therefore how much excess generated value can be "skimmed off" by the company. A software consulting firm, after all, is usually a bunch of fresh grads headed by one "architect" with experience. Most of the work is done by, and most of the decisions are made by, the fresh grads, but the work is being billed at a rate that assumes the senior "figurehead" developer, and others like him, are doing the work. (This is also true in law, finance, advertising...) Or, in other words: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/02/robin-hansons-theory-of-young-consultants.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/02/rob...

Retric 11y ago

That's part of it, but I also find recent grads tend to be useless on the hard/fun parts of development, but great for the tedious crap. Sure, with a lot of supervision interns can fill the same tasks, but recent grads tend to stick around for much longer. There is also a huge nebulous gap after that where cost and talent is not that closely connected. You can have two people with similar resumes where one is worth 200+$/hour and the other is barely better than an intern. Worse this can get very project specific. People that do great things for one project can bomb another that's superficially similar. Recent grads may be of near universally low quality, but it's predictably bad.