
Ask HN: Why hire junior developers? - kiloreux
As a junior developer and new graduate actively looking for a job a question came to my mind , why would companies hire junior developers , instead of senior and more advanced developers , of course there is the long term investment and the lower salary that junior gets compare to seniors , but is there any other reasons , that companies hiring junior developers get ?
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bowlich
On top of what everyone else has said:

If you are looking at smaller companies, there is definitely a tiered system
in terms of the complexity and challenges that a company can offer it's
development staff. One company's "junior" developer might have the experience
to be a "senior" developer at a firm with much simpler problems.

Some people have the stamina that they can just keep solving the same problems
over and over again without getting burnt out. I think most people though,
will have a tendency to seek out novel or more challenging problems as they
grow. Someone working on problems they find too easy will lead quickier to
burn out, likewise someone working perpetually on problems that are way above
their head can lead to the same.

I have changed firms three times in my career, and each time I sought out a
company that was doing something more difficult than the last. With each
company, I've come in on the lower-end of the team's skill curve and worked my
way up to the upper-end of the skill curve. Then, I got bored, burnt out and
moved on to something more difficult.

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ryan21030
I'm a junior developer and here is my opinion:

I started working when I was 18 and I believe I was hired because whilst I
still had a really good knowledge of my area (I hope), I was still very cheap
to hire £18k per year. This was good for the company I joined as it's a small
startup.

I believe that the junior developers my company have hired have all been super
eager to impress their bosses and learn new things while still having a huge
passion and interest in coding. Whilst we have all been given some time to
adjust to our project, we all quickly adjusted and were able to give be
benefits very early on. I can't speak for senior developers but these are the
main advantages of junior developers.

With regards to relative inexperience of junior developers, I myself have only
been coding for a few years now but I have a genuine passion for coding and go
home and throw myself into it every night so I believe that I pick myself up
there, someone else I work with has been coding since he was 10!! Whilst not
having a lot of experience in a professional environment before joining my
current company, in the last year or so, I have managed to learn a number of
important tools for the job like: mastering linux, built a great knowledge of
PHP, built a good knowledge of C, built a great knowledge of JavaScript, built
a great knowledge of server administration and last but not least, improved my
productivity by at least 10% by mastering vim. It doesn't take long for junior
devs to learn this stuff so they're useful to companies.

TLDR; Everyone has something to offer even junior developers.

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hanumantmk
Your business can be in something technical, difficult and not currently in
vogue. If you hire people who can already do the work, you're looking at a
narrow band of very skilled, very expensive senior engineers. You'll hire
every one of those you can get your hands on, but that'll still leave a gap
that gets wider every year as that older generation ages out. Hiring in the
3-7 year range can be a bit dicey too, because the mindset you pick up
building mobile apps isn't quite what you need to write a database, operating
system or compiler. But nobody needs those anymore, right?

So you hire out of school, build up a huge intern program and you pay the cost
to train and teach. I'm not saying it's the norm, but it's why you do it when
you're not just trying to save some money or compress wages further up the
food chain.

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WalterSear
* Not all work needs highly experienced workers. Even the smartest coder in the room is typing one character at a time.

* Everyone is more motivated and effective when they are being challenged and occupied by their work.

* Mentorship and knowledge-sharing benefits both the receiver and the teacher.

* Over the medium term, junior engineers are less likely to leave.

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brunolazzaro
I think it boils down to this 3 things:

1\. Salary. Your pay will be less than the one of a Senior Developer.

2\. Role and tasks. You will, as a junior developer, be taking on tasks better
suited for your relatively "non ripe" skills. This doesn't mean that you'll
get the short end of the stick. It means that you'll be assinged tasks that
fit your current skillset.

3\. Experience. While you might be a top-notch developer, you don't have
"real-life" experience. Most of the times senior developers have years if not
decades of experience on their backs. And with time comes wisdom.

These three things combined are a compelling reason to hire Junior devs for
small tasks and projects.

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billconan
1\. cheap

2\. not every task is creative, in fact most of them are boring. senior
developer gets bored. if you assign a senior engineer to do auto testing,
he/she will leave.

3\. junior developers work harder. interns work even harder. that's a fact.

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khaki54
There are many reasons, but I will give you an example that hasn't been
explained yet.

For some work, there is a set hourly rate the company can charge. For
instance, they may bid a contract $50/h for each developer. In this case, I
can pay a mid-level developer 65k/yr with 35k/yr in benefits and overhead, and
break even with $0 profit.

If I hire a more junior developer and pay him 50k and train him on the job, I
then make 15k in profit and he gets a year of experience.

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yeukhon
Curiosity. I am a junior developer/devops. In general I find junior level
developers are more curious about how things work. Often people find my ideas
interesting, worth thinking, or right on the spot. There are some very
talented junior-level developers who wind up being very successful members of
a team in a short period of time.

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pkaye
Two reasons come in my mind: 1\. Some junior developers are just really good
and learn fast compared to an average developer. 2\. A junior developer has
the energy and drive being new to the field. They are willing to do many
things for the sake of learning which the senior developer is already jaded
by.

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freedevbootcamp
Junior developers are hired because somebody has to do the shit work that
nobody else wants to do.

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k__
They can form them to their needs.

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abc_lisper
Eh. Any good and competent senior engineer will do the same.

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k__
Fair enough...

But there are aren't infinite senior engineers.

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giaour
There simply aren't enough senior developers to go around.

In the long-term, this means we need to make more senior developers. In the
short-term, we need someone to write some code. Hiring junior developers is
the best way to achieve both of those goals.

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tmn
Supply and demand. There is a lot of demand. There may not be (there almost
certainly isn't) enough senior devs to go around. By nature people need to
hire junior devs.

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mpnordland
For those of you who hire junior developers, how many of you hire them
remotely? Do you consider them capable of that? What would you need to see to
convince you?

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slater
New ideas?

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anon3_
No one gets gratification from bringing in a new generation?

