

Ask HN: Why Will No One Hire Jr. Devs? - meeps

I&#x27;m graduating from a developer bootcamp in Portland, OR next month. I have extensive startup experience in non-developer roles. As I&#x27;m pounding the pavement looking for my first jr. developer gig, I&#x27;m finding many companies are turning their backs on jr. developer candidates without reviewing work &#x2F; resumes &#x2F; etc at all. It seems like a lot of people are excited about training jr. devs, but not excited about hiring them. Does anyone have any tips for a new jr. dev out in the wild? Why are companies reluctant to hire jrs?
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frankpinto
We're a 5 person team at Ayalo ([http://ayalo.co](http://ayalo.co)) with one
junior dev; we've had trouble making it work so I'll share some reasons why:

\- Lack of confidence in his deliverables. The worst is being told its done
because it works on local and for small data sets (he's in charge of internal
analytics) and then when we try it on production with a months worth of data
it crashes.

\- Having to constantly remind him of the 80-20 rule. 80% of effects are due
to 20% of the functionality and having to guide him to focus on that 20%. You
want to be able to leave a dev working for two days, even a week, without
worrying that he's accidentally inflating the scope of something. More
experienced devs have a better sense of the importance and time-scale of the
things they're working on.

\- He's often so overwhelmed with having to learn things he doesn't know, or
debug things he doesn't fully understand, that he doesn't have time or energy
to think about ways in which to improve the company or product outside of his
job description.

\- Junior devs often need constant check-ins because they're sometimes ashamed
of having to ask. This happens no matter how many times you reinforce that
asking questions is the only way to learn, its human nature to a certain
extent.

My perspective, from a bootstrapped pre-seed post-launch startup, is that
early on you want people that can drive forward with you, that can push you,
not people you have to pull along with you. We've kept our junior dev because
he's motivated, passionate, and has potential. But I'd be lying if I said he
doesn't hinder our speed

~~~
alanpca
I feel like including the company name and then proceeding to trash your
employee was a poor choice.

~~~
frankpinto
Noted, I was worried it would come off like that, my mistake. We're completely
transparent with him and he appreciates the clarity into where he actually
stands in terms of skill and what needs to be improved. To be clear, though, I
meant those points to be more general; framing it around him as the example
was the poor choice. I've worked with other devs with a similar level of
experience and those are just things I see all the time

~~~
nincomp00p
i think it is nice that your company shows the clarity for these points

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rogueleaderr
I interviewed a few candidates from NYC-based developer bootcamps and the
experience scared me away from even trying to interview any more.

The people I interviewed (admittedly only three, but the ones who I thought
had the strongest resumes out of their cohorts), were unable to complete even
basic real-world programming tasks during the interviews. I would literally
sit them down, show them my code base, and ask them to make a minor
improvement to a page (i.e something that would take me <10-20 minutes to do
myself). None of them got close to finishing the task in a reasonable way.

I think the basic problem is that programming is hard and learning to do it at
a professional level takes a lot longer than 8-12 weeks. Much like learning to
be a lawyer takes more than 12 weeks -- you wouldn't hire a criminal defense
lawyer who had graduated from a "lawyer bootcamp."

If you actually do have the skills to do the job, the best way to demonstrate
it is to build a complete, functional, polished website and put your code on
Github. Some candidates I looked at had "bootcamp demo projects" on Github but
the quality of them was way, way below where it needed to be to prove they
were adequately skilled.

As they say: "show, don't tell".

~~~
meeps
Great advice. I totally get your concern. That sounds like a horrible
experience. As for me, each day I work on a personal rails project that I'm
really excited about, and I think that polishing this up will help my case.

------
ams6110
Don't call yourself a "Jr."

~~~
jeffbr13
+1 on this.

If you were hiring, you probably wouldn't choose someone who describes
themselves as a novice. Don't focus on your lack of experience, but your other
attributes.

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mildavw
The Portland startup where I work just hired 3 jr. devs. Our goal was 2
seniors and 2 juniors but we didn't get any viable senior candidates. Most
candidates were eliminated at the code challenge stage. So that'd be my tip:
if you have to complete a code challenge, make sure it's the best code you've
ever written. Even if it's a trivial task, things like full test coverage and
demonstrating that you know some OOP best practices will give you a better
chance at an interview.

The two bootcamp grads we hired had much stronger skills than most of their
peers. I had conversations with their instructors and, indeed, they said that
these guys were top of the class.

Also note that while senior devs are hard to find, competition is fierce at
the junior level. We relocated one from Boston and the other had done his
bootcamp in Chicago.

~~~
coralreef
How old were these two?

~~~
mildavw
Early/mid 20's.

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bratsche
Stop calling yourself a Jr. developer. Instead just send in your resume to
places that are looking for Rails developers and include anything you've built
so far.

That said, if you get an interview I'm not saying to misrepresent yourself.
But you're focusing on your inexperience right now. Your resume should focus
on what you've accomplished, not on what you haven't.

~~~
meeps
Yes, you are right. Good point here.

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phantom_oracle
You make it unclear what your skills are. Being a bootcamp, I assume you've
got RoR or Node.js as your stack?

You also don't specify where you are applying. Startups or corporates?

I've also never heard of any major tech companies in OR, so perhaps you may
need to consider relocating.

If I was in your position, I would go for some company like
Oracle/RackSpace/RedHat. Do the ugly grunt work for a year or so and gain a
shit load of experience. Don't be afraid to do as many certifications as the
company can afford as well.

You can then leave after that year or so. Go do some startup stuff, see if you
like it. If you don't, you can always go back to the $90k job with your certs.

PS. Here are some keywords for a startup job (polite humour): "I know web-
scale" ; "node.js and async rule the world" ; "non-relational DBs shard
efficiently and beat relational DB asses" ; "rapid prototyper" ; "Rails gems"
; "convention over configuration" .

Good luck!

~~~
meeps
Thanks for the tips. My stack is RoR.

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whywhywhy5
By Jr. do you mean a paid internship? And when you say no one is hiring, do
you mean in Portland, OR, or including SF?

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TheCoelacanth
They will. There are plenty of companies that hire CS grads straight out of
school. The reason that you are having trouble is that a bachelors in CS is
considered a basic qualification for a developer without professional
experience. Spending a few months in a bootcamp is not an adequate
replacement.

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jkmcf
Companies won’t/shouldn't hire Jr devs unless they have the bandwidth and
desire to mentor them. They may also see your non-dev work as a potential
distraction.

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cnp
In my experience, it's all about experience. Experience teaches you to come
right out and ask questions, and not kill time when many of your coworkers
most likely know or can intuit the answer.

I'm all about hiring new devs and giving them a chance, but if I meet someone
who strikes me as somewhat shy about speaking up its definitely a red flag.

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tomasien
I don't think this is true at all. Nothing about my experience suggests this
is the case. There's a very specific stage of startup that usually has little
use for Jr. Devs - growing from seed to A round requires onboarding experts.
But going from 0->seed or seed->validation or A/B round -> larger round or IPO
requires lots of Jr. Devs.

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jetsnoc
My email address is in my profile. Please send me a resume and a little more
information about yourself.

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palojobs
why don't you send an email to fotoroll at gmail dot com with your resume ?

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markcampbell
Because developers who are familiar with these kind of bootcamps realize that
the graduates that come out aren't going to be a net positive on the team.

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peterbotond
look for a developer without startup experience and have you both forge ahead
with a startup.

