There is a huge pool of exceptional junior engineers

As someone who has been hiring juniors recently. I disagree with pretty much all these points:

Great juniors learn fast and search for feedback. It’s easier to manage them. They want to improve and know what you think about their work.

--> Very skeptical of this comment. It's harder to manage someone that needs managed so directly, period.

Loyalty. engineers who you train from the beginning tend to stay longer. They understand your systems deeply and can mentor the next generation of junior engineers.

--> They really don't. They're looking for a foot in the door.

Higher ceiling. A motivated junior engineer often has more upside. You're getting someone at the beginning of their growth curve rather than the middle or end.

--> Maybe? Tough to tell. They often leave.

Juniors bring fresh energy to the team - they want to learn, and they have a drive to prove themselves and succeed. Their motivation can be contagious! The existing seniors in your team will enjoy working with smart and motivated developers.

--> Not always. Most just want a job and are easily discouraged. Some are like this though.

Juniors are not restricted by what they know. They haven't been trained to think "that's just how we do things." They’ll not try to reuse the same technologies from previous companies, or recreate those ‘amazing’ design patterns that were useful only in a specific context. It’s not just being AI-native, it’s about having less resistance to change.

--> This one I sort of agree with

> Maybe? Tough to tell. They often leave.

In my experience working with juniors, the ones that look to leave are the ones that don't have their compensation appropriately adjusted as they rank up.

Pay everyone well, treat them with respect. Challenge them, and give them raises and rank-ups as they gain tenure and skill (not when it's "in the budget, and oh sorry, we can only uprank one this year, but we hired a person at the higher level, so really we can't afford it. Try again later!"), and you'll have people that stay a long time

If you're going to end up having to pay these people high salaries, why not hire a more senior person to begin with?

The point on loyalty made me laugh out loud. Loyalty has been dead both ways for over 10 years now. Millenials and Gen Z openly shared salary to help each other get more money. An average tenure at a company went from 2 years to 1 year as well.

The idea that juniors are somehow more loyal is a pipe dream and a bald faced lie. Not that I blame them, employers have gotten much worse in the last 10 years as well, especially since the pull back in 2022 and most especially since AI. So neither employer nor employee is loyal anymore it’s completely a free for all now.

Because over 10 years, you'll have attrition in your seniors as they retire and you'll have juniors that have climbed the ranks and have built half the systems that are now juniors replacing them.

And treating employees with respect the whole time builds an *incredible* amount of loyalty. You also get opportunities for your existing seniors to help grow new team-members, which some of them seek out, and so on.

I guess I'm lucky in having had a chance to work for several fantastic companies that treated me wonderfully for years and years.

And we also raised up juniors, and paid them well. And our company had flat salaries, so everyone could easily figure everyone else's salary (and people didn't hide it, in fact we talked about it all the time).

Again, treat your employees well, and they'll stay. Places *do* do this. And people *do* stay loyal and even come to companies because they hear how well they treat their workers.

I count myself lucky as well. I've been in a few great places. Also stuck in tolerable places for 5-10 year stretches because it's a paycheck.

Sometimes people leave (for money or variety) but come back, because they realize other places were worse (despite the money). Sometimes they don't because they're afraid or tired. It varies. But yes, people often walk away from places that either treat them badly as a company or because they have coworkers that treat them badly. The reputation tends to stick, too, even though it doesn't often spread very far.

> The existing seniors in your team will enjoy working with smart and motivated developers.

Maybe I just suck, but as a senior I've rarely enjoyed working with junior developers, even the earnest ones who really wanted to learn. I always had a ton on my plate, and mentoring juniors didn't replace anything from that ton of work, it just added to it.

And yes, I get that mentoring juniors is useful and essential. But companies need to build that into the job, not build it on top of the job.