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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
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Cornbilly ◴[30 Sep 25 04:08 UTC] No.45421796[source]▶
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.

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Aurornis ◴[30 Sep 25 04:50 UTC] No.45421994[source]▶
> 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.

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krackers ◴[30 Sep 25 05:08 UTC] No.45422110[source]▶
>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.

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aspect0545 ◴[30 Sep 25 05:19 UTC] No.45422166[source]▶
There’s a big difference between somebody not being your friend and somebody being your enemy. I’ve had a similar experience with a sub par employee, who at some point admitted that he wasn’t doing his best at work because he was "only there to exchange his time for money, not make any meaningful contributions".

That guy was absolutely immersed in internet culture, making him less self-aware and very unpleasant to work with.

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1. x0x0 ◴[30 Sep 25 19:48 UTC] No.45430362[source]▶
I've had the same experience -- employees who do the minimum and then whine when (one case) asked for a raise or he'd quit and I said sgtm; and (a different person) I chose to mentor and promote other people on the team. Some people can't wrap their minds around the idea that our interests aren't always aligned, but sometimes they are and also why would I invest in someone who doesn't invest here. Mentoring and promoting people is one of the best pieces of my job, but my time is finite and I want to also spend it productively :shrug: