Who Killed The Junior Developer? (medium.com)

Melissa McEwen, writing on Medium: A few months ago I attended an event for women in tech. A lot of the attendees were new developers, graduates from code schools or computer science programs. Almost everyone told me they were having trouble getting their first job. I was lucky. My first "real" job out of college was "Junior Application developer" at Columbia University in 2010. These days it's a rare day to find even a job posting for a junior developer position. People who advertise these positions say they are inundated with resumes. But on the senior level companies complain they can't find good developers. Gee, I wonder why?

I'm not really sure the exact economics of this, because I don't run these companies. But I know what companies have told me: "we don't hire junior developers because we can't afford to have our senior developers mentor them." I've seen the rates for senior developers because I am one and I had project managers that had me allocate time for budgeting purposes. I know the rate is anywhere from $190-$300 an hour. That's what companies believe they are losing on junior devs.

Comments

HR is not to blame

[Anonymous Coward]

HR works for management. They get the requirements for jobs from management.
Blaming HR is complete nonsense.

I know, I've heard managers blame HR but it's because they are too chicken shit to fess up to their incompetence.

Every manager wants to have people to "hit the ground running" so they can make the deadlines that were forced upon them by their managers or deadlines they over promised to get their bonuses at the end of the year.

See, most tech managers are former techies who went to some weekend classes taught by charlatans and therefore are completely incompetent. This desire for "rock star" programmers is to cover up for unskilled and incompetent management.

People like to pick on managers here, but a competent and skilled management team can do wonders.

Re:HR is not to blame

[ranton]

"HR works for management". Not entirely true. On more than one occasion I've heard a manager talking to HR and complaining that they were ignoring his recommendations for experience.

HR still works for management, just management which is higher up than the managers you have talked with. The only time I ever saw a VP of HR who seemed to sometime outrank the CEO was when he was appointed by the VCs to cut costs. In that case he stilled worked for management, just the management which outranked the CEO (the board).

Re:It's very simple.

[Billly Gates]

No thank ATS computer systems like Taleo.

Here is how it works:
1. Sales man from Oracle oversells Taleo to HR VP as hey no more recruiting. Our system does it for you
2. HR fires recruiter since a software program and website can do the job.
3. System only looks for exact job description in every job and tallies up the score.
4. Since your previous employer didn't have exact job wording you are filtered out with a lower score
5. That hole on your resume in 2012 during the recession? Ha unemployable loser I see! Filter out
6. If you have all the same qualifications but did not list them for EVERY job then you are underqualified as you have 2 years experience not 5. Filter out.
7. Job description doesn't match word for word. Deducting from years of experience as last job doesn't count. Now underqualified. Filtered out.

OMG no qualified applicants look!! Idiots

You know it wouldn't hurt to actually have a human read these resumes? No really.

Linus Torvalds himself is unhirable according to these ATS job applicant systems. He has a gap on his resume from working with Transmedia to working on Linux fill time. Linus also doesn't have 3 professional managerial references...hmmm what is Linus trying to hide?? Also Linus doesn't have Oracle, RoR, node.js, tibco spitfire, Ms office VBA, Oracle reporting, and other corporate program BS list in his resume. Worst Linus Torvalds doesn't have exact same job title.

His resume won't make it HR and will be deleted. This is to show how ludcrious the situation is today

Re:H1-Bs did

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. My company doesn't hire local junior American developers. Management would rather hire cheap "preferred vendors" like TCS. Their skills are weak. As an experienced American, when I "fix" their bugs, I am (1) training foreign workers and (2) I'm reinforcing the notion that foreign outsourcing is working.