It's going to be interesting to see whether or not the development market collapses in the next couple of years when SF is finally either out of ideas or full on people (if it arguably isn't already), and the rest of the country can't keep in step because most other cities' markets are clamoring just as badly (if not worse) for the seniors. The issue, though, is that it's a catch-22 right now. Companies in smaller cities want seniors so they can get work done and not have to train anyone, but the seniors generally don't want to work in places that aren't SF/NY.<p>Someone has to budge, unless the market is to die completely. I can't mention how many times I've seen companies posting for the same position for upwards of a year instead of simply taking a chance on someone. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but that's business. Don't run one if you can't take the risks.
Considering a lot of start up founders are pretty much straight of college. And many people develop projects in their own time. I think junior developers are really underestimated. When you hire a junior you could be hiring someone crap, or someone who could be better than your seniors(I've met some bad senior developers), especially if they've been developing code since they 13 or something. Informally those types could have more experience than your experienced devs.<p>Self taught developers may also underestimate what a cs degree confers. They may not know specific frameworks, but they probably know more than you about compilers, formal grammars, machine learning and stuff like that.
I'm a "junior developer" (and first time poster!) who is about to graduate with a degree in CS and have a little over a year's worth of internship experience both at a medium/large (1500-2000 employees at HQ) and small/startup (~70 employees) sized company. As I apply to a number of companies I'm interested in working for it still surprises me that the majority of these listings for dev's are asking for 3+ years or 5+ years experience. Now I completely and whole-heartedly agree that if the job description mentioned something ridiculous (we need you to create custom SOAP requests using haskell) then perhaps the experience is merited. But when I actually reach out to the companies asking for 3+ years experience and ask what they're trying to accomplish in the immediate future, where they need additional developers (i.e. what team is this for), etc. I'm surprised to hear it's nothing unusual. There might be the need to occasionally do packet inspection (or something else semi-uncommon) for debugging or what have you but is this really beyond me and my peers? It might be beyond some, and while I can't speak for all the junior dev's out there, I personally am comfortable enough to do this on my own.<p>Now please correct me if I'm wrong but basically it comes down to this: if I were the hiring manager I wouldn't focus so much on the number of years the dev has but rather if that dev "still has it" (if they're older/more experienced). By "still has it" I mean a genuine passion for writing solid code and being humble enough to know when they're wrong and changing their behavior. If it's a younger dev maybe it's best to focus on trying to determine if they have a genuine interest in becoming a better programmer and a real thirst for knowledge/love to learn (in-line with the article). My only gripe with the latter point are <i>how</i> some of these companies are filtering but that's entirely their choice.
I saw Vinod Khosla @StartupGrind and he had this to say about junior people on teams (I am paraphrasing a lot):<p>You want to have a balanced team of experienced people and junior people. This creates a team that is willing to try new "risky" ideas and at the same time allow for insight from experience. Age should not be a factor in seniority.<p>He also noted that, unfortunately, we usually hire in our own image.
Joel said it best: Smart and gets things done. That's really all you need. They don't need to be rock stars or 10xers or top 1%. You just need to be able to give them something to do and have confidence that it will get done in a timely manner and the code won't end up on Daily WTF. They need to have enough passion to bring some new knowledge to the table once in a while without you explicitly telling them to go learn about X. They need to get along with their teams. I think if you just push hard for those simple things, you will end up with some top tier developers anyway.
junior / senior are just titles that don't always mean something.<p>better to hire a junior who is willing to learn than a burnt out senior who can't adjust to change.<p>to be honest though in my 10 year experience in the field i've seen a lot of junior developers who believe that finishing university was the last time they ever had to learn something new.
I've been job hunting for a while as a sort of "Junior Rails Dev", and am finding it near impossible to find a job at a startup. I really question which companies will train people in some startup-heavy technologies like Rails and Node.
This is a pretty interesting post from a company who's product languished for years, and was an absolute bear to use. Opening up the market for people like GetSentry, Errplane, etc. I suspect they needed more senior devs not less.
I've seen it defined a couple different ways, so I'll ask for HN's opinion: What exactly constitutes a junior dev?<p>Less than 3 years? 5? Less than X jobs?
A little bit meta, and to be clear I'm making no assumptions, statements or complaints about here; but it's interesting that this describes the hypothetical junior developer as female. In the following line, why would the author not just say <i>their</i>, to include both genders?<p>>> When you hire a junior developer, you’re going to have to invest resources in her training.