
61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience - giffarage
https://talent.works/blog/2018/03/28/the-science-of-the-job-search-part-iii-61-of-entry-level-jobs-require-3-years-of-experience/
======
jmadsen
It seems to me the whole problem amounts to companies deciding to redefine the
word "entry", then acting all disappointed when no one else uses that
definition.

"Entry" means "to enter the workforce". It means you have pre-work experience
such as a specific degree, speak a certain language, etc.

If you advertise an "entry level web development" job and I just boot camped
for that, I am qualified and will apply.

If you want "Junior Developer", say so.

(Comment by someone that this is a gimmick to reduce salary sounds pretty
right on.)

~~~
Aloha
Entry Level ought to be 'willing to train', Junior, some experience, Senior,
8+ years of experience.

Sadly title inflation is also a thing.

~~~
epicureanideal
I think part of the problem is the titles themselves...

"Senior" implies "Highly Experienced" meaning "lots of years of experience".

Whereas it's completely possible for a person with 3-4 years of experience to
be a "Very Good Engineer" within their specific domain and be as valuable,
respected, listened-to, etc. as a "Senior Engineer". It doesn't happen often,
but it happens.

If we had titles more like "Apprentice", "Journeyman", and "Master" Software
Engineer, then we wouldn't have this issue. Someone could be a Journeyman
after 2 years or 4 depending on how rapidly they progressed through their
"apprenticeship" phase, and to "Master" as soon as they had completed
sufficiently complex work to have completed a "masterpiece" equivalent.

~~~
jashmatthews
> "Senior" implies "Highly Experienced" meaning "lots of years of experience".

Not necessarily. Medicine has "Senior Resident" or similar in some countries
as the last step before becoming an independent physician. Law and finance
have senior associate before junior partner.

~~~
pc86
Well we're talking about developers, not physicians or attorneys. We don't
have multiple steps like resident, physician, associate, partner, etc.

~~~
jashmatthews
We should! Lots of bigger places have senior engineer, then staff engineer
etc.

------
jamestimmins
The buried lede here seems to be "In real life, folks need to apply to 150-250
jobs to get a job".

I'd be so, so interested to see the breakdown here, and what causes these
types of numbers. Are there just enormous numbers of applicants for every job?
Are people applying for jobs they aren't qualified for? How does this compare
in tech vs the rest of the job market?

The signal/noise ratio must be absurdly low if this is possible.

~~~
pagnol
I've similarly always struggled to make sense of these kinds of claims,
because in my life so far I was offered a job every time I applied, so I'm
wondering if I'm either living in an area where the job market is much less
competitive or if I'm aiming too low. It's out of the question that I'm some
kind of hotshot, on the contrary my CV is a mess and I dropped out ouf
college.

~~~
vokep
I think its a mix of different perspectives. Theres people like you and myself
who hear all this about applying to hundreds of jobs and it sounds absurd. For
you it sounds like this is because you got lucky enough to not even need to
look. Then theres those who apply to hundreds of jobs and then wonder why they
don't get many responses.

Something to note there is, how much attention is being paid to each listing.
For the jobs you've applied and gotten, you probably were a really great fit.

Having reached a point of being on the other side, looking for people to hire,
I think there are really warped perceptions all around. If your hiring, you
aren't swamped with great candidates but with resumes. Basically, most resumes
go in the trash, but because most of them are hollow, there was nothing there
to start. If you're actually skilled and can demonstrate it in any way then
its far easier to find a job. I think most of the people who apply to 200+
jobs to get one either are not skilled or don't know how to demonstrate that
they are.

~~~
Izkata
I'm like you two - the second job I applied to out of college, I got an offer
for. Still there 7 years later, and in that time the our tech interviewers
have occasionally told stories or shared some of the more absurd programming
tests (with names removed). This:

> If your hiring, you aren't swamped with great candidates but with resumes.

is exactly the case for us. 90%+ of them fail a test where each question is
only slightly more difficult than FizzBuzz. Some of them don't even attempt to
answer all the questions.

I have little doubt they're the ones sending 200+ resumes out, hoping someone
bites.

------
ry_ry
Phone post, so may be a little disjointed...

Until very recently I was frontend lead for a fairly large UK site, and one of
the best hires I ever made was a 32 year old former-recruiter with no
commercial programming experience, and no CS background.

However it was far from plain sailing. We had mutual friends and whilst
chatting in a pub, and they won me over with their passion and enthusiasm for
what I discovered was their dream job.

I brought them on as a jr, into a small talented team with measures in place
to ensure there was the opportunity to learn on the job and appropriate tasks
to work on, but it quickly became apparent they were out of their depth. I
worked on mentoring in work and and pointed them in the direction of stuff
they might look at outside of work to dodge the bullet.

My work started to suffer because I was spending so much time mentoring,
fixing code that had become irrevocably tangled and trying to manage a very
stressed & frustrated jr dev.

Eventually I had no choice but to move them into a different team where the
work was less technically demanding and more html/css focused, with a small
salary cut. Everybody was disappointed with the situation but the alternative
was letting them go.

Three years later, that dev rejoined the core engineering team a more
experienced developer, passion intact, and having learned their trade in a
lower pressure environment, comfortable they could handle the role. I'm
incredibly proud of them for the way they handled the situation and am
absolutely confident this time will be a success.

That said, it'll probably be the last time I hire a dev with zero development
experience. As an investment in an individual it's incredibly worthwhile, but
despite the happy ending, the whole experience was fairly disastrous.

~~~
justherefortart
There's a huge difference in no work experience and no experience at all.

Hiring college grads without a lot of real world experience gives you the
opportunity to mentor and train in good methodologies that I find older
developers will refuse to implement without incessant fighting.

It is more work initially but the long run payoff has been fantastic in my
experience. When you manage based on yearly expectations that are attainable
life is so much more enjoyable.

The biggest key is management and upper management buy-in. Sadly that's
exponentially more difficult to get when most places see IT as a sunk-cost
instead of an opportunity to deliver more efficient workflows internally and
externally.

I'm on the fence about working with developers that don't have college
degrees. The gaps in their skill-set frequently causes issues no matter how
much experience they've had.

~~~
protonimitate
I'm curious to hear what kinds of skill gaps you see and the severity of
issues they bring, and if there are common knowledge gaps or it's more random.

~~~
Brockenstein
I would have to assume, coming from that sort of background. College makes you
take classes and learn skills that "you" don't care about or don't see
immediate value to, but you have to do it anyway. Maybe not all of them are CS
classes either.

It's possible for a self-taught to developer to learn a lot but stay in their
safe bubbles of expertise, work or school can push you out of your comfort
zones quite frequently and force you to expand your horizons. In a way that
you might not do for yourself, at least not all the time.

Individual experiences may vary. I'm not saying there aren't some amazing
talented self-taught programmers just you have to be very careful in assuming
that they all are.

~~~
misterhtmlcss
As an evolving self-taught I think it's too early for me to speak confidently
on this topic, however I will add my two sense for what it's worth.
_Additional background; I 'm the local Admin for a Free Code Camp (FCC) group
so I meet lots of aspiring self-taughts btw.

1\. Many many self-taughts (ST?) aren't joining coding for passion, they are
joining because they want to change careers and think coding is easy. They
think this (IMO) because it's famous for hiring non-graduates.

2\. They then proceed to join groups like FCC in massive surges that closely
correlates what's happening in the job market; which doesn't fuel me with
confidence in their conviction to become a ST dev. It's kind of like joining
the gym Jan 1; if you wanted to be healthy why wait until your NYE resolution.
So like a gym 90% of those that join then go silent in our group nearly
immediately.

3\. I'd say about 1-4% of those who join even complete FCC and of those I
genuinely believe they've all found success. Ironically FCC draws in a ton of
weak links because it's free, but also because it's free very very few of us
ever finish and get a certificate.

If I had a chance to hire an ST that was junior I'd definitely be curious
about their story. Their story will tell you so much about the 'man' they are:

\- Did they go balls deep and pay $15k+ and give up sleep and life for 3+
months? What did they do afterwards? What did they do before?

\- Did they chip away at FCC for 1-2 years building out a portfolio, FINISHING
at least the FE certificate?

You see where I'm going here? In my life I've never met someone who did truly
well without an internal desire to get it done and that can't be taught. The
real advantage of an ST can be their resilience and determination to do what
is needed to succeed and if you ignore that amazing skill/asset just because
he's without a paper then it's definitely a mistake.

So while I'm not advocating for STs over Grads, I am saying they can be very
special and valuable assets that are worth taking a long look at when you get
their resume.

You'll see more of me soon; I'm quiting my job May 1 to focus on finishing my
skills to a commercial standard, which I've waited two years to do; I'm
finally near the finish line and I can't be more excited to be going full time
on my passion.

_ __This was written on my phone; so apologies if I 'm vague, impolite or
grammatically a fail. It's hard when you're trying to work and quickly add two
cents of value on a topic you love.

~~~
Brockenstein
No I think this is also a great point. I didn't even think about all the
people who try to give programming a go because they hope it's easy and they
know it's lucrative, but don't really have the stomach for it. And I would
have to assume at least some of those people half ass it and still try to get
jobs and exaggerate their abilities hoping they can fake it till they make it,
never mind the faking will likely be indefinite.

I'm sure people in HR have seen more than their fair share. Folks who have any
visibility into bootcamps or anything probably see it. I think programmers as
a class can be a bit insulated from the reality of how many people make the
attempt or try to get jobs they're patently not qualified for relying on the
potential for self-taught, non-degree'd, programmers to still have a shot.

------
kushalc
Hey guys, I'm the author of this post! (And also happen to be TalentWorks
CEO.) A friend sent me this link, I'm happy to answer any Qs.

Also, we're hiring. :) If you're sick of spending all your hard-earned
education and experience to help Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. increase ad
CTR by 0.001%, we're working on some pretty cool technical problems. Just
email me at kushal@talent.works.

~~~
stinkytaco
Hmmmm... what have you got for someone with no experience?

j/k, but I am curious how much time you think is average for a job search in
terms of both hours spent and days/weeks before finding something. You talk
about "time and stubbornness" but I'm interested just how much time and how
much stubbornness. I realize this varies widely by industry, but I would
expect there's some sort of white collar average.

~~~
kushalc
We're actually hiring for no-experience positions too! (TBH, some of my best
hires were no-experience, high-potential fresh grads who've turned into
powerhouses.) I don't suppose you want to be a Marketing Assistant? ;)

To your specific Q, yes, it does vary dramatically by location and specialty.
In fact, we did an analysis about exactly that a few months ago! Even for
white-collar positions, it ranges from ~14 weeks (software engineers) to ~90
days (HR specialists) to >>90 days (mechanical engineers):

[https://talent.works/blog/2017/09/22/how-long-does-it-
take-t...](https://talent.works/blog/2017/09/22/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-
a-job-60-days-if-youre-in-hr-or-sales/)

When you dig in, even specialties that take the same time have very different
reasons. For instance, mechanical engineers see a pretty high interview
callback rate to job applications, it's just that there aren't _enough_
mechanical engineer job openings out there! OTOH, there are tons of HR
specialist job openings but you need to apply to a million jobs to even get
one reply.

~~~
eitally
And those date ranges can vary wildly for extremely differing reasons.
Especially for white collar jobs, you may have a negotiation period that last
weeks-to-months, especially if you're currently employed while applying.

------
Spooky23
It’s not jobs, it’s job postings.

You need to demonstrate that no candidates with skills are available to get a
visa waiver. It’s called compliance advertising. There’s a whole industry of
body shops that do this stuff and collude on rates. The folks they hire are
the foot soldiers of banks and government.

~~~
outworlder
This kind of job ad is seen in other countries as well, not just the US, even
ones where foreign applicants are really uncommon.

~~~
toyg
It's not limited to visa-cheating; in certain industries, you have to
advertise the position even if you already know who you're going to hire. Look
at the backpages of publications like The Economist - do you really think huge
companies will find a CEO or Senior Executive with a magazine ad? Of course
not.

~~~
lulmerchant
That's how I got my current job. I was working as a consultant for a company,
and we all mutually decided that I should come in and fill a rather high
ranking permanent role there. They asked me to write the job description for
it, and work with HR to get it posted. That night I went home and applied for
the job. That being said, I've never properly applied for a job in my life,
and I'm pretty sure this is rather common.

------
StaticRedux
3+ years doesn't mean 3+ years "in a job". That makes no sense. (Well, maybe
for some companies it does, but you don't want to work there anyways). For
some reason people can never get over that.

It means 3+ years with a technology. It means don't walk in the door out of a
Java college having used nothing else and apply to work on a Triple A game
written in C++. It means don't show up after a weekend html course and apply
for a job using Node/React. And before you say "well that isn't me for so and
so reason", it happens ALL the time to employers.

An entry level position does not mean you get to learn on the job from scratch
or near scratch. It means that you are at least capable enough to work on
small or easy problems and features and an employer or other devs can coach
you along the way and you'll know what they are saying to you.

That's all it means (to any reasonable employer).

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Bull. I've been using Python since high school, but very few employers I've
ever spoken to were willing to actually label me as having any years of
experience in Python.

~~~
ugh123
Did you have anything to show for your work since high school? Any projects
online? Github codebase?

I know a Github profile shouldn't necessarily be required to count as
experience. But if your _only_ experience is non-work related then you're
probably going to want to back it up with something tangible.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
I have something of a github, yes.
[https://github.com/esennesh](https://github.com/esennesh)

------
fzeroracer
Speaking as someone currently in that position (developer with two years of
experience) my personal experiences seem to align quite well with the data
they collected.

When companies say 'entry-level', they seem to be referring to around 2-3
years of working experience. Not just college + internships, but actual
professional experience. It's an extremely silly market to be in right now if
you're a fresh grad.

All this talk about passion or numbers aside, I've had the opportunity to
experience things from the other side and see how many senior-level developers
with 10+ years of experience couldn't write an if-statement in their choice of
language to save their lives, or even elaborate on basic design
choices/decisions.

~~~
cutler
Can you please elaborate? Honestly, I'm interested to hear how anyone with
such a low level of technical skill managed to get anyone to believe they were
anything more than a junior. It also interests me because recently I've had a
number of recruiters try to convince me that I'm a senior just because I've
been programming for a living for 12 years. I'm honest enough with myself to
admit that although I've used several languages during that time the jobs were
all similar, freelance/sole developer CRUD jobs which didn't really challenge
me so there was no continuouse progression technically. Sometimes testing was
an afterthought so on that basis I wouldn't even qualify as mid-level. The
thing is that "senior" means something completely different to a recruiter and
maybe also to a manager?

~~~
fzeroracer
The reason why they were able to seem like they were senior was because they
had the work history. Even though their technical skills were lacking, the
sheer amount of development history automatically made them a potential
candidate worth interviewing.

Once you have guaranteed interviews, from there it's just a matter of finding
a company with the most lax interviews or one where you can fake it the
easiest. At least that's my best guess; I don't fully understand how someone
can work for a company for over a decade yet can't understand basic OOP or
fizzbuzz-level challenges. It became a serious issue at my company because
most of the senior-level candidates we got were utterly useless.

~~~
cutler
Most of them? This is getting more bizarre. Surely code tests would weed out
anyone lacking decent technical skills? At one extreme we're told that a
senior works on open source projects and knows the languages he/she uses
inside out. At the other end we hear about seniors who can't even code? Is
this really so common?

------
PeterStuer
Over here the labels are 'junior', 'medior' and 'senior'.

They are primarily used as a pay-scale indicator. It's not that recruiters are
dumb and looking for fresh graduates with 3 years of industrial work
experience, it is that they are looking for people with 3 years of experience
that will accept working in the 'junior' pay-scale knowing that it will be 2-3
years before they move up to the 'medior' payscale.

Many/most companies in the IT industry fail to have a decent technical
'ladder', so upping the 'label' once every two years while basically not
changing the job is way of pretending that your developers are having a
'career'.

Traditional 'entry level' does not exist at most places as the bulk of
companies don't want to pay for the training/mentoring phase. Too much
overhead given the projected short career span.

~~~
EnderMB
In the UK, I've noticed more companies moving to Entry -> Junior -> Mid-level
-> Senior.

To me, this makes sense, as it allows easier access for people re-training or
coming in outside of school without a degree. Graduates come into junior roles
due to their degree, whereas school leavers or those that have re-trained
spend some time as an entry-level developer.

I've worked with a few entry-level developers, and they've worked their way up
through companies to land senior-level roles in a few years. Sure, it took
them a bit longer than a university graduate, but there was a route into the
industry for them. It was a bog-standard job (agency dev for clients) but when
opportunities are few and far between it's a great way to get passionate
people in.

------
dotcoma
Do we need more evidence that "Entry-Level" means "poorly paid"?

~~~
headsoup
I personally think there two issues here:

a) Expectations of 'Entry-level' actually being greater than
'junior/apprentice'

b) Mentors not part of the role

Both of these issues have arisen from a lack of willingness to have a long-
term view and wanting immediate ROI, which I imagine has come about from the
perceived view that staff don't stick around anyway.

Set up proper trainee/cadet/apprentice programs, provide mentors and support
and these staff will probably a) take the low pay at the start, b) appreciate
the learning and support, c) stick around and d) create greater ROI in the
end.

Seems not to be how business operate now, and I feel it's painfully evident
when I observe how many 'experienced' managers there are in charge of things
that have no idea what they're doing. They also appear to often actually have
no idea what capabilities they require and so just create industry 'roles'
with the hope some experienced person will know what to do.

~~~
monocasa
> I imagine has come about from the perceived view that staff don't stick
> around anyway.

And that's because of the decades of employers destroying the relationship
between them and labor. I'm never going to see a pension, and there are almost
no more apprenticeships. Why should I as an employee invest in my company if
the company treats me as a replaceable cog.

The lack of employee loyalty can be directly linked to the Reagan-esque
destruction of the labor movement, IMO. I have to watch out for myself, and
therefore if push comes to shove, my needs are more important than the
company's.

------
throwaway2016a
Apologies for a post that s pretty much 100% anecdotal...

This article rings true to me.

My wife ran into this after college only for her industry (biomedical
engineering) it is 5 years for "entry level" and they didn't even count her
paid college jobs even though they were relevant experience.

Robotics is even worse. Unless you've been building robots as a hobby for the
last 5-10 years (which is a VERY expensive hobby btw) it doesn't matter how
much other engineering or programming experience you have, they won't take
you.

I got lucky with the opposite. I started paid programming in high school and
employers counted my high school and college jobs as experience and I had
three competing mid-level offers at graduation. So I skipped entry level
entirely. And this was in 2007 right before the recession really kicked in so
companies were already starting to hold back on hiring.

On the flip side, an actual entry level coder we just hired expects to be
working on fun new R&D stuff even though he has 0 experience and I thought we
set expectations during the interview. We have him working on bug fixing and
client change orders (he will eventually get to R&D but someone needs to fix
the bugs, we can't all work on just the "fun" stuff).

------
faitswulff
This also explains why I started to get so many callbacks on job applications
at year 5 in my programming career:

> 3, 5 and 8 are your magic numbers. After 5+ years of experience, you
> (officially) qualify for most mid-level jobs. After 8+ years, you qualify
> for senior ones. And 3+ for entry-level, obvs.

~~~
kushalc
Right? We see it all the time.

Waterluvian commented below about the hiring markets self-optimizing
themselves to efficiency.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16702612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16702612)

In short, we see so many market inefficiencies in hiring, it'd be hilarious if
it weren't folks' lives we were talking about. There's no practical difference
between someone who has 4.750 years of experience and 5.250 years of
experience, but the market dramatically prefers the latter.

------
shawn-furyan
What you think this does: filter out inexperienced people

What this actually does: bias you toward hiring people who are comfortable
lying

~~~
drk4
This is the tragedy of it. They are trying so hard to only get the "best of
the best" that the only way you can possibly be interested in that position
and quality for it is by lying.

------
bproven
Another interesting factoid I gathered from this is the "avoid ageism" tip
about removing dates from graduation + only list last 10 years of job
experience. I've always suspected it, but this supports it as a reality. Sad
reality that we throw away experience...

------
jaimex2
And this is why you lie on your entry level resumes kids.

~~~
crazcarl
You absolutely shouldn't lie. But you also shouldn't let your lack of
experience stop you from applying to entry level jobs.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
If you don't lie you may be out competed by those who do.

~~~
ikeyany
Then the focus should be on making it harder for liars to win.

~~~
treis
How does one searching for an entry level job do this?

~~~
ikeyany
For starters, gravitate towards fields that prioritize substance over style.

~~~
Density
Wouldn't that be a nice universe to live in...

------
jaclaz
What I often cite (for fun):

[https://tudorbarbu.ninja/message-to-
recruiters/](https://tudorbarbu.ninja/message-to-recruiters/)

most notably "This is how most job ads sound nowadays:":

 _We’re looking for a person with more than 100 years of experience in
software development, coding everything from BIOSes to cloud applications,
knowledge of all past, present and future operating systems and setting up
secure networks. The applicant must also be able to juggle up to twenty balls
and read hieroglyphs, be fluent in Swahili and dance like Michael Jackson
(especially moonwalking – nice to have at corporate Christmas parties)._

~~~
tracker1
It's not just now... I remember 10-20 years ago, and even more recently seeing
jobs requiring X years of experience in Y tech. When Y tech only existed for
half of X or fewer years.

------
kardos
Don't forget that people with 3+ years experience probably aren't applying for
entry level jobs

------
gnopgnip
Entry level doesn't mean people with no experience, and it means something
different for every company. Entry level for the NFL means having 8+ years of
football experience for instance. Not every company hires people straight out
of highschool or college. But there still are many that will hire people with
0-1 years of experience for entry level roles.

~~~
tytytytytytytyt
X years of experience might also count part time work done during college.

------
alankritjoshi
The best I saw on LinkedIn was "3 years of experience required in TensorFlow".
Released in late 2015...

~~~
hysan
Recently (few weeks ago) saw a job that required 3+ years professional
experience building React Native apps. _Announced_ in early 2015...

~~~
mlnj
Maybe they are looking for the select few who developed it.

~~~
hysan
The salary was high, but certainly less than what I imagine a senior dev at
Facebook earns and probably far far less than what one of the original core
React Native devs earn. So maybe, but unlikely.

------
mrarjen
Best way to get a job is through networking with people, I had a year of
unemployment and after sending out hundreds of applications I ended up getting
asked by a friend to do some work for him instead.

In a matter of fact all jobs I had, have basically been thanks to people I
know who worked at those companies.

------
paulie_a
I remember 2 years after .net came out there were jobs requiring 6 years
experience. I asked a recruiter about that and they were shocked I had the
audacity to even ask

------
sixdimensional
There is an interesting catch-22 I've experienced regarding a recommendation
the article makes - if you remove things like graduation dates, previous
positions / etc. once you reach a certain age (35+ per the article), potential
employers now don't have that information.

The catch-22 is, if you're not careful, now employers may think you are NOT
senior and so you may be able to get a job, however, it might not be
appropriate for your skill level. It can be frustrating for an experienced
person.

Although, I've found that, once you have a job, generally typical employers
don't really care what you've done before and forget your past experience
(which is a shame for them!). Depending on the employer, most of them care,
"Can you do what I want from you when I ask it of you?" and that's about it.

I've also heard the advice that says, if you have the experience, and you want
a job, your resume should be explicitly tailored to no more and no less than
what a job posting requests. I think the advice of obscuring your information
to make yourself difficult to gage from an age perspective is an interesting
approach, but it probably fits into the same category of advice.

I know this article is likely just a promotional piece for the author's
business, but, I have to admit, a number of points felt pretty accurate based
on my personal anecdotes.

~~~
kushalc
Definitely not just a promotion. We're a mission-driven company and a we've
explicitly chosen as a company to share our learnings with folks (even if it
reduces our competitive edge a tiny bit) because we believe it's important to
good. Not quite open source, but maybe open knowledge?

And while it's nowhere near peer-reviewed academic paper quality (we won't be
submitting to Nature or NIPS anytime soon), my personal background is ML —
everything we write is backed by cold, hard internal data and we try to stick
to the facts.

All of that said, yes, people really like our data-driven insights and it does
drive traffic. :)

~~~
sixdimensional
I've always found the truth and good intention to be the best sales tools, so
I admire your approach!!!

------
thepra
Am I the only one who thinks that basing your actual skills _only_ on how many
years of work you had is a little bit retarded?

------
collyw
Isn't this just useless management trying to be cheap?

In a company I worked for, I saw a LinkedIn ad for an intern with experience
in a lot of specific tech that would have been more intermediate to senior
level. For around a tenth of what I was being paid. I know in that case it was
the company owners trying to be cheap and not having much clue about IT.

------
justin_vanw
"Entry Level" is a euphemism. It doesn't mean "No experience" it means "Not
very good so has to work cheap, but can do basic tasks with lots of
supervision."

------
crimsonalucard
I get it though. The employer is thinking: Why do I pay you to train you? You
should pay me to train you.

Lets bring back the apprentice system.

~~~
bcheung
I've said the same thing myself about bringing back the apprenticeship system.
That system required a contract of typically 7 years though and that is why
masters would take on apprentices. 7 years is a long time but if there is a
way to have your investment not just walk out the door after you spent a bunch
of resources getting them up to speed that would make it much more feasible.
Perhaps a forgivable loan upon completion of the apprenticeship?

~~~
sotojuan
A big chunk of the tech industry doesn't think in 7+ years long terms. They
think in "next seed round" terms. Therefore, they want senior devs now so they
build whatever they need to hopefully hit the user count for the next seed
round.

If your company thinks short term (e.g. next 2 years) like most tech startups
do, hiring juniors and training is out of the question.

------
tyler_larson
I guess it depends on how "experience" is defined. I had 8 years of
"experience" programming before my first full-time paid job.

I am somewhat entertained every time a see jobs requiring 10+ years of
experience with Go or Typescript or Swift. It's a sign of just how well-
thought-out these postings are.

------
golergka
"Require"? The fact that something is written in job description as a
"requirement" doesn't mean that you won't get hired without it. I think that
most jobs I got as a self taught engineer had a degree as a requirement – and
it was almost never even mentioned in an interview.

~~~
jesseryoung
Was just about to post this. At least in my experience I think that it's rare
for a hiring manager or someone in HR to use an original job description when
posting a job. They all Google job postings, find one that fits the title
modify the technology parts of it and just post it.

------
jorblumesea
I have heard that in many cases, these are actually H1B/Visa positions, where
they can set requirements that no one realistically hit, then use that to
cover that position with a visa. Reason being, then you can say "no qualified
applicants".

Is there any truth to this? Or is it just FUD?

------
stinkytaco
I worked part time for a couple of years before I ended up full time in my
profession. It's a luxury few people have, but quite common in my line of
work.

But having hired people, I see this from the other end. I have precisely one
person under me. It's all we can afford and I'm in municipal government, so
positions are not easy to create. Given that situation, and how hard it is to
get rid of someone, I have to be _really_ careful who I hire and that means
favoring experience. I expect more supervisors than not are in my position,
wanting to mentor but not being able to take the risk.

------
treis
I call bullshit. I searched "entry level developer" on indeed and spot checked
10 of them. Not one said 3 years experience required.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
As other posters have pointed out, did the ads say 3 years’ experience in a
similar job - or 3 years’ experience with a particular language, framework or
platform?

Even if someone has a Bachelors in CS, I wouldn’t hire for an entry-level C++
gif without 3 years’ experience with the language: I expect them to pick it up
during their time in academia - especially as many (of the best) start coding
in high-school or earlier. So in fact, I’d be alarmed if an applicant with a
CS degree _didn’t_ claim at least 3 years experience with a common
instructional language like Java.

~~~
fzeroracer
You make a lot of assumptions that end up not playing out so well. For example
when I was at university we didn't have a single core language we used for
everything; classes bounced around between C#, Java, C++, Python, Ada, HTML,
Javascript and so forth. There are graduates that have wide experience but not
depth.

Which speaking as an aside; I was denied an internship back in college because
I didn't have three years of professional experience in Java. Needless to say
I found it absurd at the time.

You also assume that the best people are coding earlier or have the ability to
code earlier. Some of the best developers I've worked with didn't start coding
until later in their life.

------
williamscales
If you go to college and do an internship or research fellowship each summer,
you will come out with "3 years" of experience.

~~~
filoleg
Can you actually do that/do people do that? E.g., if someone did a software
engineering internship for at least one semester every year of their college
(4 years), can they count those years as field/industry experience? Albeit not
full 4, but 2-3 years?

~~~
sudosteph
You should definitely count any part-time tech work or summer internships
towards total industry experience. Companies may not count it at first, but it
will end up giving you leg up. It may not seem like much, but compared to the
people who got a degree without working in the industry, I guarantee you know
way more and would be more useful to a company.

In my case, I got hired at an "entry" level position for a huge company along
with other "new college grads" types, many with masters degrees but no
experience. I was promoted within a year to the mid-tier position while my
less experienced cohorts spent 2-3 years getting there. From mid-tier, it
becomes more about what you actually know and what you've done rather than
"years since graduated from college", so getting to senior level with only 3-4
years "full time" experience is not impossible if you play your cards right
(and really do get good experience during college).

------
jrs95
In my experience it's been more like:

61% of Entry-Level Jobs "Require" 3+ Years of Experience. (They almost never
do in practice)

------
known
Let's be realistic; Entry level jobs are filled with
recommendations/connections;

------
adamredwoods
Is this because it has become too easy to apply for jobs? Should there be a
stronger barrier to even apply to something (ie. take this automated test to
apply...)?

~~~
dabockster
> Should there be a stronger barrier

The job board should say something like "to apply for this job, please show up
at our next hiring event on XYZ date".

Thoughts?

------
Waterluvian
Won't the market sort out whatever this is?

Is there a specific unfair mechanism at play that would prevent supply and
demand from finding its balance?

~~~
chroem-
The fact that people need a source of income to live, and that they have very
little influence on the price of their labor without collective bargaining.

~~~
paulddraper
Don't forget the fact that companies need employees to survive and they have
very little influence on the price of the labor without (illegal) collusion.

~~~
AstralStorm
Not true. They have the ultimate influence on the salaries once they have
hired enough people. They can just not hire.

A person cannot really "not be hired" for prolonged time unless they're
already rich. Most cannot tolerate unemployment for even a short time. Even
students who don't have many commitments cannot do so for too long.

Only for very small companies this is somewhat true.

~~~
paulddraper
> They have the ultimate influence on the salaries once they have hired enough
> people. They can just not hire.

Likewise, employees have the ultimate influence on salaries once they have
enough leverage in the job market.

A company hiring is like a person finding a job: they only have to once for a
long period of time.

A company paying a salary is like a person working a job: they have to do it
constantly.

\---

You can say the cards are stack in the favor of employers, and they sometimes
are, but remember 4 out of 5 businesses fail. Four out of five individuals do
not go bankrupt.

------
tyingq
Maybe the crackdown on H1B visas will change this? I'm sympathetic to the
valid cases, but it was/is being abused.

~~~
toyg
Nah, it's the internet. This phenomenon started right after job websites went
mainstream.

------
unixhero
This should he a banned tactic by every Ministry of Labour

------
Density
We're almost in the society from the movie Elysium.

The US went from being the land of opportunity to the land of overqualified
uber drivers and warehouse workers.

------
jlebrech
yes, you have to spend 3 years doing something you don't like doing while you
learn 1 skill that you actually want.

------
rb808
I dont really understand what the problem is. If a job says 3 year experience
"required", it just means they want people that know what they're doing. If
you worked a few summers and are good at something you're qualified to apply.

~~~
TheSmiddy
the problem is that the job is titled "entry level" and then asks for 3 years
experience. It's a bait'n'switch that wastes everybody's time.

If they only wanted a few summers worth of internships etc they should say
that, 3 years experience is commonly interpreted as 3 years continuous on the
job experience.

------
crankylinuxuser
This also sounds like a great way to cut out "undesirables". The women can be
'given' social roles and kept out of the tech areas, and minorities are never
allowed the 3 years experience.

Yeah, its jaded. I've been around the block a few times. Of course nobody
outright says these things. They never really have to. The policies enforce
those decisions.

~~~
jrs95
This is really absurd, most HR people in this field would go out of their way
to hire the demographics you mention.

Plus, those years of experience requirements are dumb and nobody, not even
large corporations, even enforces them in my experience. The closest thing
you'll get to having this kind of requirement be enforced is people that are
sticklers for college degrees.

