When Should You Hire a Junior Developer?

http://blog.airbrake.io/devops/when-should-your-hire-a-junior-developer/

by justinmares • 13 years ago

28 48 13 years ago

blog.airbrake.io

UK-AL2• 13 years ago

Considering a lot of start up founders are pretty much straight of college. And many people develop projects in their own time. I think junior developers are really underestimated. When you hire a junior you could be hiring someone crap, or someone who could be better than your seniors(I've met some bad senior developers), especially if they've been developing code since they 13 or something. Informally those types could have more experience than your experienced devs.

Self taught developers may also underestimate what a cs degree confers. They may not know specific frameworks, but they probably know more than you about compilers, formal grammars, machine learning and stuff like that.

justinmares2• 13 years ago

Good point. Especially given how easy it is to retrain junior developers through things like Treehouse and dev bootcamps, I think it's an investment more companies will start making.

rfnslyr• 13 years ago

Please find me these jobs because I'm having a hard time deciding what to eat tomorrow.

Will I go with the usual rationed slice of wonderbread or go gourmet with a can of tuna?

michaelochurch6• 13 years ago

I'm skeptical of the Dev Bootcamp phenomenon, if only because it seems like many of them are very expensive. I've heard of five-digit tuitions for three-month programs.

Then again, I guess it's good for us that this is happening because it will drive up the value of high-end programming talent. I've heard that "teaching programming is the new teaching English abroad" and that could be good for us as a group; we'll get better pay and more autonomy in the long run.

michaelochurch6• 13 years ago

I think you'd be surprised by the wide variation in both the CS graduate and self-taught pools. Lots of overlap on that matter.

There are a lot programmers who understand CS quite well but studied other topics in school. There are also plenty of CS programs that don't seem to be turning out a lot of competent engineers. Hell, there are PhDs who can't even code.

Knowing the fundamentals is important-- often, it's extremely valuable, because you need that stuff to hit the high notes-- but if it doesn't come with practical abilities pertaining to how to write code, learn new libraries, and pick up technologies, then it's just book-learning that's already probably 10 years old.

devonbarrett• 13 years ago

You can self teach CS so you end up with the same knowledge as someone who took a degree.

stickydink• 13 years ago

A little bit meta, and to be clear I'm making no assumptions, statements or complaints about here; but it's interesting that this describes the hypothetical junior developer as female. In the following line, why would the author not just say their, to include both genders?

> When you hire a junior developer, you’re going to have to invest resources in her training.

7273743• 13 years ago

'their' is plural and therefor would be grammatically incorrect

akavi• 13 years ago

Are you a native English speaker from the United States or the UK?

If so, I'm willing to bet a large amount of money that if I were to record you speaking, it'd be less than an hour before you used 'their', 'they', or 'them' with an unambiguously singular antecedent.

Singular 'they' is pervasive in English, and has a long and storied history.

petercooper• 13 years ago

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/10018465...

dragonwriter2• 13 years ago

'their' is plural and therefor would be grammatically incorrect

No, while "their" is grammatically plural which affects verb conjugation (e.g., "he goes" vs. "they go"), its use for cases which where the antecedent is singular in number and indefinite in gender is well-established English usage which long predates the Latin-inspired prescriptivist attempt to erase such usage and was never seriously diminished in use despite that prescriptivist effort.

In English as it is, rather than English as some lovers of Latin wished it would be, "they" is perfectly correct for this use.

bcbrown3• 13 years ago

Some people deliberately refer to hypothetical engineers as female, to counterbalance the pervasive usage of masculine pronouns. Personally, I like writers who mix it up like that and refer to a generic person as female sometimes.

mbillie1• 13 years ago

I assumed this as well.

crazygringo• 13 years ago

I've heard of people suggesting that you use your own gender as a writer.

But the author is "Justin", and his photo looks pretty masculine -- very interesting, I've never seen a guy default to "her" before in text.

bluetidepro• 13 years ago

I'm glad I wasn't the only person to notice this. I'm surprised they didn't put his or her training, rather than just her training.

hvs• 13 years ago

Even more meta: would you have noticed if the author had said, his? And would you have felt the need to point it out here?

kyriakos• 13 years ago

junior / senior are just titles that don't always mean something.

better to hire a junior who is willing to learn than a burnt out senior who can't adjust to change.

to be honest though in my 10 year experience in the field i've seen a lot of junior developers who believe that finishing university was the last time they ever had to learn something new.

mathgladiator• 13 years ago

better to hire a junior who is willing to learn than a burnt out senior who can't adjust to change.

ageism much?

I think it depends on the background of each candidate, and age is irrelevant. Job history, on the other hand, isn't irrelevant.

rquantz• 13 years ago

I don't think they're saying all senior revs are like that, just that an eager junior is better than a jaded senior. Obviously an eager senior is best of all. See the above discussion about how hard it is to find those people.

kanwisher• 13 years ago

This is a pretty interesting post from a company who's product languished for years, and was an absolute bear to use. Opening up the market for people like GetSentry, Errplane, etc. I suspect they needed more senior devs not less.

cuttooth• 13 years ago

It's going to be interesting to see whether or not the development market collapses in the next couple of years when SF is finally either out of ideas or full on people (if it arguably isn't already), and the rest of the country can't keep in step because most other cities' markets are clamoring just as badly (if not worse) for the seniors. The issue, though, is that it's a catch-22 right now. Companies in smaller cities want seniors so they can get work done and not have to train anyone, but the seniors generally don't want to work in places that aren't SF/NY.

Someone has to budge, unless the market is to die completely. I can't mention how many times I've seen companies posting for the same position for upwards of a year instead of simply taking a chance on someone. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but that's business. Don't run one if you can't take the risks.

michaelochurch6• 13 years ago

Companies in smaller cities want seniors so they can get work done and not have to train anyone, but the seniors generally don't want to work in places that aren't SF/NY.

Disagree strongly. In fact, I'm moving to Baltimore (from NYC) for a few years (probably) and really looking forward to it. There are a lot of smart people there-- a lot of different kinds of smart people, unlike in, say, the Valley where there's one kind of smart people and that's programmers-- and DC is only an hour away. I might end up in California eventually, but I'm seeing a lot of interest in the most talented people in getting away from the legacy-laden "star cities". It's not quite an "exodus", but I hear more conversations about Austin than San Francisco around NYC. Six or seven years ago, Austin was barely on the map; even New York was the hinterlands except for Wall Street. Now, the general sense is that the Bay Area is for older people who were able to get in and buy a place at a reasonable price, before it got all fucked up.

Makers like new places and open opportunity, as well as freedom from established hierarchies. That means they'll always be moving around from one generation to the next. To tell the truth, though, macrolocation (California vs. Texas; Northeast vs. South) seems to matter a lot less over time, and microlocation (cities vs. suburbs, proximity of cafes and bike paths) matters more. I think that trend's continuing, thanks to the Internet. 20 years ago, or even 10, being an unusual person (3-sigma intelligence; gay; artistic inclination; minority religion or, in many communities, no religion) in a B city meant social isolation. In 2013, it really doesn't; you can find your tribe even if you are, say, an atheist in the South.

Someone has to budge

I think that the next 15 years of talented young people are going to be more dispersed than the last 15. That means there will be fewer superhubs and that's a good thing. It does, however, fragment the labor market, which means that the volatile culture-- the two-sided itchy trigger finger dynamic-- of promiscuous job hopping and fast firing will have to go. Companies will also be more willing to invest in talent. They'll have to be that way; the extremely liquid talent market of the Bay Area now won't exist (anywhere) in 10 years.

Stwerner2• 13 years ago

What makes you feel that the next 15 years of talented young are going to be more dispersed, have you seen any indications of it? Is the idea just that the bubble will burst, scattering everyone throughout the currently underserved market?

I'd also love to hear why you think there will be fewer superhubs (and why that's good). A lot of my reading lately has suggested the opposite - growing superhubs, and why that is a good thing.

tocomment2• 13 years ago

What is it you like about Baltimore? I haven't heard of it having many technology jobs but it is an interesting place. I live near Baltimore now. Drop me an email if you have any questions.

vonmoltke• 13 years ago

So true. As a senior-level who has zero interest in SV or NYC, my biggest frustration is with companies who demand 5+ years of professional experience in specific skillsets, essentially a drop-in piece for what they think they need right now. This attitude extends hiring, or in this case not hiring, juniors as well, it seems.

Its one of many frustrations driving me back towards electrical engineering, though EE employers are even worse about this one particular point.

mscottmcbee• 13 years ago

I've seen it defined a couple different ways, so I'll ask for HN's opinion: What exactly constitutes a junior dev?

Less than 3 years? 5? Less than X jobs?

bcbrown3• 13 years ago

Here's one: someone who doesn't yet know how to work in an industry environment, instead of an academic environment.

Another: Someone who both needs hand-holding when starting a task, and lacks confidence in their final output.

ericHosick• 13 years ago

I saw Vinod Khosla @StartupGrind and he had this to say about junior people on teams (I am paraphrasing a lot):

You want to have a balanced team of experienced people and junior people. This creates a team that is willing to try new "risky" ideas and at the same time allow for insight from experience. Age should not be a factor in seniority.

He also noted that, unfortunately, we usually hire in our own image.

andrewSC• 13 years ago

I'm a "junior developer" (and first time poster!) who is about to graduate with a degree in CS and have a little over a year's worth of internship experience both at a medium/large (1500-2000 employees at HQ) and small/startup (~70 employees) sized company. As I apply to a number of companies I'm interested in working for it still surprises me that the majority of these listings for dev's are asking for 3+ years or 5+ years experience. Now I completely and whole-heartedly agree that if the job description mentioned something ridiculous (we need you to create custom SOAP requests using haskell) then perhaps the experience is merited. But when I actually reach out to the companies asking for 3+ years experience and ask what they're trying to accomplish in the immediate future, where they need additional developers (i.e. what team is this for), etc. I'm surprised to hear it's nothing unusual. There might be the need to occasionally do packet inspection (or something else semi-uncommon) for debugging or what have you but is this really beyond me and my peers? It might be beyond some, and while I can't speak for all the junior dev's out there, I personally am comfortable enough to do this on my own.

Now please correct me if I'm wrong but basically it comes down to this: if I were the hiring manager I wouldn't focus so much on the number of years the dev has but rather if that dev "still has it" (if they're older/more experienced). By "still has it" I mean a genuine passion for writing solid code and being humble enough to know when they're wrong and changing their behavior. If it's a younger dev maybe it's best to focus on trying to determine if they have a genuine interest in becoming a better programmer and a real thirst for knowledge/love to learn (in-line with the article). My only gripe with the latter point are how some of these companies are filtering but that's entirely their choice.

bcbrown3• 13 years ago

Just because they put 3+ years experience on the job req, doesn't mean that not having 3 years experience will preclude you from consideration. Job reqs are often a wish list, and they'll hire someone who only fills some of the reqs.

ozziegooen• 13 years ago

I've been job hunting for a while as a sort of "Junior Rails Dev", and am finding it near impossible to find a job at a startup. I really question which companies will train people in some startup-heavy technologies like Rails and Node.

vinceguidry• 13 years ago

Startups aren't the place for junior devs in any technology stack. What you need is an established, profitable small business that's NOT a tech startup. The company I work for sells makeup. You'll probably inherit a broken pile of shit, spend a year or two cleaning it up, refactoring, and upgrading to the newest stack. Take the opportunity to learn best practices and CS theory and use them in your job. When you're done, consider yourself ready for a more serious job.

smurph• 13 years ago

Joel said it best: Smart and gets things done. That's really all you need. They don't need to be rock stars or 10xers or top 1%. You just need to be able to give them something to do and have confidence that it will get done in a timely manner and the code won't end up on Daily WTF. They need to have enough passion to bring some new knowledge to the table once in a while without you explicitly telling them to go learn about X. They need to get along with their teams. I think if you just push hard for those simple things, you will end up with some top tier developers anyway.

tp2k222• 13 years ago

when you have just enough money to allow for it, but not enough money to pay for someone with any higher skill level or experience.

When Should You Hire a Junior Developer?

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