> Also, there's a decently large subset of small startups where there's 1 technical founder and a team of contract labor, trying to build that first MVP or cranking out early features in a huge rush to stay alive, where yeah, cheap unlimited interns might actually be meaningfully useful or economically more attractive than whatever they're doing now
That's when experienced developers are a huge plus. They know how to cut corners in a way that will not hurt that much in the long term. It's more often intern level that are proposing stuff like next.js, kubernetes, cloud-native,... that will grind you to a halt once the first bugs appear.
A very small team of good engineers will get you much further than any army of intern level coders.
Yeah "actually good engineers" are like a 10:1 ratio with intern/new college hire/junior consultant level.
Not to generalize too much but if you are contracting out to some agency for junior levels, you are generally paying markup on coders who couldn't find better direct hire jobs to start with. At least with mid/senior level you can get into more of a hired-gun deal for someone who is between gigs/working part time/buy a share of their time you couldn't afford full-time.
In fact most junior consultants you are basically paying for the privilege to train other peoples employees who will then be billed at a higher rate back to you when they improve.. if they don't move on otherwise.
That's when experienced developers are a huge plus. They know how to cut corners in a way that will not hurt that much in the long term. It's more often intern level that are proposing stuff like next.js, kubernetes, cloud-native,... that will grind you to a halt once the first bugs appear.
A very small team of good engineers will get you much further than any army of intern level coders.