Comment by JustExAWS 3 days ago
ChatGPT is better than any junior developer I’ve ever worked with. Junior devs have always been a net negative for the first year or so.
From a person who is responsible for delivering projects, I’ve never thought “it sure would be nice if I had a few junior devs”. Why when I can poach an underpaid mid level developer for 20% more?
I’ve had interns be a net negative, I’ve had Juniors be a net negative, I’ve had Seniors be a net negative and even managers!
Turns out some people suck, but most of them don’t suck.
> junior developers with no experience are going to need more handholding
Unlike AI, which gives me fake methods, broken code, and wrong advice with full confidence.
Truly depends on the organization and systems. I’m at a small firm with too few Senior staff, lots of fire-fighting going on among us, etc. We have loads of low-hanging fruit for our Juniors so we tend to have very quick results after an initial onboarding.
The most impressive folks Ive worked with are almost always straight out of school. It's before they've developed confidence about their skills and realized they can be more successful by starting their own business. People who get promoted three times in just 5 years sort of good.
Did their project manager and/or team lead think when they were hired “they are really going to be a great asset to my team and are going to help me complete my sprint/quarterly goals”?
When I ask for additional headcount, I’m looking at the next quarter since that’s what my manager is judging me based on.
I’m a great mentor when given the time. Two former interns for whom I was their official mentor during my time at AWS got return offers and are thriving two years after I left. I threw one in front of a customer to lead the project within three months after they came back after graduating. They were able to come through technically and had the soft skills. I told them my training approach is to “throw them at the bus. But never under the bus.”
I’m also a great teacher. That’s my $DayJob and has been for the past decade first bringing in new to the company processes and technologies, leading initiatives, teaching other developers, working with sales, CxOs (smaller companies), directors, explaining large “organizational transformation” proposals etc. working at startups and then doing the same in cloud consulting first working at AWS (ProServe full time role) and now working as a staff architect full time at a third party consulting company.
But when I have been responsible for delivery, I only hire people who have experience “dealing with ambiguity” and show that I can give them a decently complicated problem and they can take the ball and run with it and make decent decisions and do research. I don’t even do coding interviews - when I interview it’s strictly behavioral and talking through their past projects, decision making processes, how they overcame challenges etc.
In terms of AWS LPs, it’s “Taking Ownership” (yeah quoting Amazon LPs made me throw up a little).
What happens when you retire and there are no juniors to replace you?
That sounds like an incentive issue.
My evaluations are based on quarterly goals and quarterly deliverables. No one at a corporation cares about anything above how it affects them.
Bringing junior developers up to speed just for them to jump ship within three years or less doesn’t benefit anyone at the corporate level. Sure they jump ship because of salary compression and inversion, where internet raises don’t correspond to market rates. Even first level managers don’t have a say so or budget to affect that.
This is true for even BigTech companies. A former intern I mentored who got a return offer a year before I left AWS just got promoted to an L5 and their comp package was 20% less than new hires coming in at an l5.
Everyone will be long gone from the company if not completely retired by the time that happens.
> Bringing junior developers up to speed just for them to jump ship within three years or less doesn’t benefit anyone at the corporate level.
What? Of course it does. If that's happening everywhere, that means other companies' juniors are also jumping ship to come work for you while yours jump ship to work elsewhere. The only companies that don't see a benefit from mentoring new talent are those with substandard compensation.
That’s true, but why should I take on the work of being at the beginning of the pipeline instead of hiring a mid level developer. My incentives are to meet my quarterly goals and show “impact”.
To a first approximation, no company pays internal employees at market rates in an increasing comp environment after a couple of years especially during the first few years of an employee’s career where their marker rate rapidly increases once they get real world experience.
On the other hand, the startup I worked for pre-AWS with 60 people couldn’t, wouldn’t and shouldn’t have paid me the amount I made when I got hired at AWS.
I've never had a junior dev be a "net negative." Maybe you're just not supervising or mentoring them at all? The first thing I tell all new hires under me is that their job is to solve more problems than they create, and so far it's worked out.