Who killed the junior?
Junior lot, not enough jobs
A few months ago, I went to an event for women in IT. There were a lot of novice developers, graduates of programming courses or training programs. Almost everyone said that they had problems finding a first job.
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Personally, I was lucky. My first “real” job after college in 2010 was the position of “junior application developer” at Columbia University. Nowadays it is difficult to find even a job for the junior. The people posting such vacancies are inundated with resumes. At the same time, companies complain that they can’t find good senior-level developers.
But why is this happening?
I am not quite sure of the exact mechanics of what is happening, because I myself do not control such a company. But I know that these companies tell me: “We don’t want to hire juniors, because we cannot waste the time of leading programmers on their training.” I saw seniors' bids, because I myself was like this, and my project managers made me allocate time for the purpose of budgeting. I know that rates are about $ 190- $ 300 per hour. That is why companies believe that hiring newbies is not profitable.
I do not believe in it, because no seigneur works full time at a rate of $ 300 per hour. In addition, groans about excessive spending are similar to crocodile tears, taking into account all the time that experts are wasting (at least, in my opinion) in meetings and the like.
But suppose that companies start taking back to junior teams in teams. Now you will have a new problem, because the seniors have no experience working with beginners - and in general there is no experience of teaching people. When I first started working with juniors, I had no idea how to do it. I was lost and confused. My company could not help: "Just give them some work to learn something." But in reality this is not enough.
I looked for some reference materials on this topic - and found nothing. If you know these, please report in the comments. In the end, I came up with a somehow suitable strategy from fragments of different courses and various tasks.
But the madness is how much I had to learn in the process. I don’t think that I would ever be able to understand at a deep level the functions of JavaScript, if I didn’t have to explain them to another person. Some of the tools that I developed for training ended up being used in real projects.
There were times when I was disappointed. Especially when project managers or other managers did not understand the situation. When they did not understand that I could not take the job on time, because I spend time on training these people.
I'm trying to say that the entire software development ecosystem needs newbies for its own well-being. Their training has its price, but also carries benefits.
If a company wants to hire juniors again, I would recommend taking the time to develop a program that will help seniors and everyone else who works with juniors to effectively master the skills of mentors. And also take into account the harsh reality.
You need to understand that not all novice coders will become successful programmers. How to treat this? Will you blame their mentors? Or track skills development and transfer those who do not really cope to other positions where they can succeed: for example, to project managers, sales support engineers and other non-programming positions, but where knowledge of software is valuable.
And not all seniors become successful mentors. There are many great developers who simply do not have such talent. They should be able to move away from these responsibilities. Those who are engaged in mentoring cannot be punished. In one team, I taught the novice the most - and there was a feeling that this was considered to be less of a “real” job than that of other seniors. Because of this, I subsequently reluctantly assumed such a role. Yes, and I think that the attitude of men to women here also matters: when a woman assumes such a role, it often looks like a caring mother patron from the outside. This means less prestige, and usually the less prestige - the less salary.
I can not fail to mention some other economic difficulties that hinder the juniors. I recently visited an event at one company, and they essentially said that all the “easy” work was outsourced to another country. Previously, such work was done by juniors. Then there is automation. Much of the work that I personally did as a junior is now automated.
Now novice programmers find it difficult to find a first job. You may have to do something that I really hate recommending, for example, working on different projects for free. If you find a really great open source project that you can then put in your resume. I am less inclined to recommend working for free in a “startup”.
In addition, you will have to look for a mentor yourself. Training at personal meetings is best, although I understand that this option is not available to everyone. Therefore, you can try closed subject channels in Slack and Discord. And this is the same crap as a date. Get ready to be denied often. You will have to work on slop and completely failed projects, because they are afraid to assign greater responsibility to free workers. As one junior told me, he stopped going to our meetings, because his project failed. I had to persuade him to continue working and take on new projects, knowing that many of them are sloped and will not end with anything good.
For my part, I am happy to help the guys at our meetings and would like to work on developing more formal mentoring programs in these conditions.
I'm not sure that this solution is suitable for everyone. I'm not sure if you can call unbalanced companies without juniors - or vice versa, they act correctly. The reality is that most developers do not stay in one place for a long time - perhaps it makes no sense to invest heavily in the training of someone? Or maybe industry representatives should ask themselves why do people keep jumping from place to place? Maybe because many of them are crap programmers, and maybe for many this is the only way to raise wages. I can either wait for a stupid, pointless annual “performance review,” which will raise my rate by 1%, or take my resume, go to an interview in another place - and get a 10% or more increase.
This does not mean that there is a flaw in any particular company. This is a flaw in the whole industry.
A few months ago, I went to an event for women in IT. There were a lot of novice developers, graduates of programming courses or training programs. Almost everyone said that they had problems finding a first job.
')
Personally, I was lucky. My first “real” job after college in 2010 was the position of “junior application developer” at Columbia University. Nowadays it is difficult to find even a job for the junior. The people posting such vacancies are inundated with resumes. At the same time, companies complain that they can’t find good senior-level developers.
But why is this happening?
I am not quite sure of the exact mechanics of what is happening, because I myself do not control such a company. But I know that these companies tell me: “We don’t want to hire juniors, because we cannot waste the time of leading programmers on their training.” I saw seniors' bids, because I myself was like this, and my project managers made me allocate time for the purpose of budgeting. I know that rates are about $ 190- $ 300 per hour. That is why companies believe that hiring newbies is not profitable.
I do not believe in it, because no seigneur works full time at a rate of $ 300 per hour. In addition, groans about excessive spending are similar to crocodile tears, taking into account all the time that experts are wasting (at least, in my opinion) in meetings and the like.
But suppose that companies start taking back to junior teams in teams. Now you will have a new problem, because the seniors have no experience working with beginners - and in general there is no experience of teaching people. When I first started working with juniors, I had no idea how to do it. I was lost and confused. My company could not help: "Just give them some work to learn something." But in reality this is not enough.
I looked for some reference materials on this topic - and found nothing. If you know these, please report in the comments. In the end, I came up with a somehow suitable strategy from fragments of different courses and various tasks.
But the madness is how much I had to learn in the process. I don’t think that I would ever be able to understand at a deep level the functions of JavaScript, if I didn’t have to explain them to another person. Some of the tools that I developed for training ended up being used in real projects.
There were times when I was disappointed. Especially when project managers or other managers did not understand the situation. When they did not understand that I could not take the job on time, because I spend time on training these people.
I'm trying to say that the entire software development ecosystem needs newbies for its own well-being. Their training has its price, but also carries benefits.
If a company wants to hire juniors again, I would recommend taking the time to develop a program that will help seniors and everyone else who works with juniors to effectively master the skills of mentors. And also take into account the harsh reality.
You need to understand that not all novice coders will become successful programmers. How to treat this? Will you blame their mentors? Or track skills development and transfer those who do not really cope to other positions where they can succeed: for example, to project managers, sales support engineers and other non-programming positions, but where knowledge of software is valuable.
And not all seniors become successful mentors. There are many great developers who simply do not have such talent. They should be able to move away from these responsibilities. Those who are engaged in mentoring cannot be punished. In one team, I taught the novice the most - and there was a feeling that this was considered to be less of a “real” job than that of other seniors. Because of this, I subsequently reluctantly assumed such a role. Yes, and I think that the attitude of men to women here also matters: when a woman assumes such a role, it often looks like a caring mother patron from the outside. This means less prestige, and usually the less prestige - the less salary.
I can not fail to mention some other economic difficulties that hinder the juniors. I recently visited an event at one company, and they essentially said that all the “easy” work was outsourced to another country. Previously, such work was done by juniors. Then there is automation. Much of the work that I personally did as a junior is now automated.
Now novice programmers find it difficult to find a first job. You may have to do something that I really hate recommending, for example, working on different projects for free. If you find a really great open source project that you can then put in your resume. I am less inclined to recommend working for free in a “startup”.
In addition, you will have to look for a mentor yourself. Training at personal meetings is best, although I understand that this option is not available to everyone. Therefore, you can try closed subject channels in Slack and Discord. And this is the same crap as a date. Get ready to be denied often. You will have to work on slop and completely failed projects, because they are afraid to assign greater responsibility to free workers. As one junior told me, he stopped going to our meetings, because his project failed. I had to persuade him to continue working and take on new projects, knowing that many of them are sloped and will not end with anything good.
For my part, I am happy to help the guys at our meetings and would like to work on developing more formal mentoring programs in these conditions.
I'm not sure that this solution is suitable for everyone. I'm not sure if you can call unbalanced companies without juniors - or vice versa, they act correctly. The reality is that most developers do not stay in one place for a long time - perhaps it makes no sense to invest heavily in the training of someone? Or maybe industry representatives should ask themselves why do people keep jumping from place to place? Maybe because many of them are crap programmers, and maybe for many this is the only way to raise wages. I can either wait for a stupid, pointless annual “performance review,” which will raise my rate by 1%, or take my resume, go to an interview in another place - and get a 10% or more increase.
This does not mean that there is a flaw in any particular company. This is a flaw in the whole industry.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/349104/
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