There is a huge pool of exceptional junior engineers

When I hire juniors, I try to give them problems that I know they likely won't be able to solve in the interview because I want to see how they think about things. The problem has become that a lot of kids coming out of college have done little more than memorize Leetcode problems and outsourced classwork to AI. I've also seen less and less passion for the career as the years go by (ie. less computer nerds).

Unless the company is doing something that requires almost no special domain knowledge, it's almost inevitable that it's going to take a good while for them to on-board. For us, it usually takes about year to get them to the point that they can contribute without some form of handholding. However, that also mostly holds true for seniors coming to us from other industries.

> The problem has become that a lot of kids coming out of college have done little more than memorize Leetcode problems and outsourced classwork to AI. I've also seen less and less passion for the career as the years go by (ie. less computer nerds).

I started browsing spaces like /r/cscareerquestions and joined a few Discords to get a sense for what young devs are being exposed to these days. It's all very toxic and cynical.

I've noticed an inverse correlation between how much someone is immersed in Reddit, Twitter, and Discords and how well they function in a business environment. The Reddit toxicity seems to taint young people into thinking that their employer is their enemy and that they have to approach the workplace like they're going into battle with evil managers. I've had some success getting people to chill out and drop the Reddit vibes, but some young people are so hopelessly immersed in the alternate reality that they see in social media that it's hard to shake them free.

>seems to taint young people into thinking that their employer is their enemy

Is this not true to a first approximation though? I mean you do have to "hide your power level" in some way, but the fact that the employer isn't your friend or family is a good working model to keep in the back of your mind. It's a prisoner's dilemma type situation, and defect/defect seems to be the equilibrium we've converged at.

It's true for many companies, but to be successful it helps to act as though it isn't.

Senior leadership sincerely believes that they are a force for good even when they are doing things to harm their workers, their customers, or society at large. It's human nature to feel that way, and to contradict that is to offend them and risk getting labeled as "hopelessly immersed in Reddit toxicity".

And the easiest way to keep up the act is to fool yourself, because most of us aren't good at faking it. Find the best in senior leadership and emphasize it to yourself; find win-win opportunities (or make them!). Maybe it's even true that the company is a force for good! (I genuinely believe this about all my past employers in varying amounts, but I've been choosy and have made sacrifices.)

But be stern about never putting yourself in a position where you can be taken advantage of, because senior leadership, being weak humans like all of us, will succumb to temptation.

To add clarity, that's caused by social programming not human nature.