
Dear Graduates, You’re Not “Junior Developers” - bdcravens
https://builttoadapt.io/dear-graduates-youre-not-junior-developers-53b80e020713
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howard941
Is the author is too concerned with semantics? I think so, a little. Junior
developer may be the keyword hit that lands a recent graduate her first job in
the profession. Apprentice developer... I like that term, but both of us
liking it will not overcome the negative connotations it sets up in the minds
of those writing the job descriptions and keyword parameters associated with
unions and closed guilds.

From a self criticism side my $DAY_JOB classes me as a sr firmware engineer
for reasons of pay grade - title determines pay at this Fortune 500. The
keywords that land me offers include "senior firmware engineer", "hard
realtime", and for some reason "pilot". Copyedits.

~~~
bdcravens
It's not just a matter of pay grade, especially at the junior level: they
should be able to handle certain tasks on their own. If they are in the
process of learning a language or framework well enough to do their job,
they're not yet junior. In lieu of a loaded term like apprentice (not just for
the historical context, but any negative feelings towards the show of that
name), "trainee" is pretty commonly accepted across all industries.

~~~
howard941
Good points. I was going to counter with "entry level" but that's sort of just
rephrasing "junior" in that it presupposes the individual knows where the
documentation is and how to read it, or in the 21st century which search terms
to use and how to turn the results into functional code.

