←back to thread

There is a huge pool of exceptional junior engineers

(workweave.dev)
263 points mooreds | 1 comments | 30 Sep 25 03:17 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
hibikir ◴[30 Sep 25 03:54 UTC] No.45421738[source]▶
Hiring juniors is always great if you, somehow, have a much better filter for finding the stars than the rest of the market. But if you don't, hiring bad juniors is a disaster: No different than outsourcing bits to a bad satellite office.

So are you actually good at finding the good juniors in this very difficult environment? Can you change your hiring machinery to improve, as most traditional ways have stopped working? Because hiring a lot of juniors that don't work out sure can kill companies.

replies(4): >>45421781 #>>45421872 #>>45422482 #>>45429714 #
goalieca ◴[30 Sep 25 04:03 UTC] No.45421781[source]▶
Hire one junior per team. Don’t overload your senior staff with OKRs and managerial tasks. Let mentorship and apprenticeship happen.
replies(2): >>45421859 #>>45421956 #
throwawaysleep ◴[30 Sep 25 04:21 UTC] No.45421859[source]▶
I guess what’s the value of the junior there? Why is that superior to just having the seniors have their heads down coding and not being pestered by a junior?
replies(7): >>45421878 #>>45421881 #>>45421905 #>>45421920 #>>45422035 #>>45424270 #>>45430184 #
decimalenough ◴[30 Sep 25 04:26 UTC] No.45421881[source]▶
What do you do when your seniors move on or retire?

Also, even seniors are usually more than happy to outsource work they've already done a million times, but that's still new to the junior ("build the Terraform to stand up this cluster" etc).

replies(2): >>45421996 #>>45422042 #
1. creakingstairs ◴[30 Sep 25 04:50 UTC] No.45421996{4}[source]▶
I mean I agree with hiring juniors. I try to push for it as it’s how I got into this industry but it’s a bit of a prisoners dilemma right? It’s best for everyone if we all hired and trained up juniors but one could also defect and only hire seniors.

Besides most companies won’t last long enough to worry about senior talent drying up.