

When Should You Hire a Junior Developer? - justinmares
http://blog.airbrake.io/devops/when-should-your-hire-a-junior-developer/

======
cuttooth
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.

~~~
michaelochurch
_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.

~~~
tocomment
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.

~~~
michaelochurch
What's your email address?

~~~
tocomment
I think I just emailed you. Not sure if I got the right email.

------
UK-AL
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.

~~~
justinmares
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.

~~~
michaelochurch
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.

~~~
justinmares
Sure, but considering that an average salary in SF is 80-90k, seems like an
investment worth making if they can deliver what they promise. Especially when
compared against the cost of a 4 year CS education.

~~~
UK-AL
I don't like dev bootcamps. I think they produce people who know specific
things like web dev with ruby or iOS development. They are like the java
schools spolsky warned us about.

I think the best developers are generally educated in cs.

------
andrewSC
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.

~~~
bcbrown
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.

------
ericHosick
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.

------
smurph
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.

------
kyriakos
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
> 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
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.

------
ozziegooen
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
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.

------
kanwisher
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.

------
mscottmcbee
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?

~~~
bcbrown
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.

------
tp2k222
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.

------
stickydink
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.

~~~
727374
'their' is plural and therefor would be grammatically incorrect

~~~
dragonwriter
> '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.

~~~
727374
Ok, thanks for the correction. I was not aware of the storied history of
plural they. I rarely, if ever, see this pattern in professionally edited
writing, though. Is it just me?

~~~
gruseom
You likely see it all the time and don't notice it.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Abbc.co.uk+"has+their"](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Abbc.co.uk+"has+their")

[https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anytimes.com+"has+thei...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anytimes.com+"has+their")

[https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aguardian.co.uk+"has+t...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aguardian.co.uk+"has+their")

