←back to thread

There is a huge pool of exceptional junior engineers

(workweave.dev)
263 points mooreds | 3 comments | 30 Sep 25 03:17 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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 #
Gigachad ◴[30 Sep 25 04:58 UTC] No.45422042[source]▶
People only average a few years in a job these days. The juniors are most likely to end up as seniors somewhere else. So hiring juniors who provide negative value at the start is mostly benefiting the industry as a whole at your own personal loss. Which makes it a pretty easy thing to cut.

I know in other industries they have a kind of lock in where they provide free training under the condition that you work at the same company for a number of years. Which sounds bad but I don't see many alternatives.

replies(6): >>45422145 #>>45422726 #>>45429734 #>>45429785 #>>45432462 #>>45443085 #
abenga ◴[30 Sep 25 05:15 UTC] No.45422145[source]▶
But you too can hire seniors in the future who were juniors trained "somewhere else". This is the kind of shortsighted selfishness that's ruining most things.
replies(1): >>45422535 #
Gigachad ◴[30 Sep 25 06:28 UTC] No.45422535[source]▶
Obviously it's selfishness, but it's a prisoners dilemma where the you just lose if you are the only one training the juniors who then move on to the competitors later.
replies(1): >>45428246 #
ryandrake ◴[30 Sep 25 17:15 UTC] No.45428246[source]▶
So motivate them to not move on to competitors. I don't think companies should cynically take it as given that people only last N years, and will leave for greener pastures once they're trained. They're leaving for a reason, so address that reason.
replies(1): >>45430315 #
1. mattmanser ◴[30 Sep 25 19:44 UTC] No.45430315{3}[source]▶
I believe the reason is often not a company problem, it's a variety problem that nothing can solve.

It's a totally unavoidable problem with our industry.

People get bored working on one domain, one product and one codebase.

And most software shops have one domain, one product and one codebase.

replies(2): >>45433637 #>>45433749 #
2. DangitBobby ◴[01 Oct 25 02:19 UTC] No.45433637[source]▶
I have quit a dev job exactly one time, when offered a salary the first one wouldn't meet (the HR person straight up told me she didn't understand why they would pay me $80k in the exit interview, this was like 6 years ago). Since the second company pays me well (with benefits), gives me yearly raises, and gives out generous performance based bonuses, I haven't looked for another job since then. And yes, job #2 is often boring.

It's pay. It's always been pay.

3. hmcq6 ◴[01 Oct 25 02:36 UTC] No.45433749[source]▶
> It's a totally unavoidable problem with our industry.

It's the pay.

> People get bored working on one domain, one product and one codebase.

Yeah bullshit. It's the pay.