Due to the unstable situation in the world, the attitude of Junior and Middle IT specialists has changed: companies are reducing Junior and Middle specialists or stopping hiring them. Any company will diversify risks and try to cover the largest number of needs — that is why they try to take on Junior specialists. And while Middle professionals are less at risk, Junior professionals are greatly affected. Nevertheless, each level of IT professionals is important and necessary in its own way. Let’s look at why you should pay attention to Junior and Middle workers.
Budgetary savings
There are tasks that a Junior specialist is perfectly capable of handling. There is no need to hire highly skilled workers, whose salaries are much higher. It is always advisable to select a professional for your level of responsibility in the company so that there is not a situation where there are several Seniors on staff and some of them perform mostly Junior tasks.
Routine work is more suitable for Middle and Junior specialists
Seniors already have a wide set of tasks, and if you add Junior and Middle-level work to them, the specialist will be overloaded. He will be distracted from his main work to do Junior’s tasks, having to switch back and forth. The quality of any employee’s work will suffer from this. In addition, Junior and Middle workers are more ready for basic tasks — they haven’t yet accumulated as much experience to deal with the architectural level of a Senior. Companies often, especially in a crisis, recruit Seniors. They assume that such experts will quickly do the necessary development and thereby save the company — such a system is unstable. The hierarchy is made so that each level has its own range of tasks.
If we recruit only Seniors, they will first have to do all the Juniors’ work, then switch to creative tasks, and make decisions. If we recruit only Juniors, there will be no one to design new things, and the business will not expand. If you take only Juniors and Seniors, but don’t take Leads, you lose control of the team. A balance, the so-called golden ratio, is needed everywhere.
Stay longer with one company
HR may notice that Junior and Middle professionals tend to be in the same position longer. Why? When Seniors have reached a certain threshold — they want to jump higher. If they don’t get that opportunity within the team (if the manager doesn’t think it’s necessary, or can’t afford to develop the Senior), the Senior starts looking at outside offers in search of the right company. This is how they move from one company to another with further development into the Lead team.
Middles don’t yet have the necessary knowledge and autonomy to make such decisions. They leave, mostly if they are having a hard time in the workplace, or if an important internal process isn’t working out and messes up the employee’s life. If the company is doing well, the Middle will work long enough. The same goes for Trainees and Juniors.
Higher loyalty to the employer
A big advantage of hiring Juniors and Middles is loyalty — the younger the professional, the greater the loyalty to the company. Hired at an early stage, given “bread”, training — such a person will have not only a job but also loyalty to the company and the team. They are more attached to the company than the Seniors, who in any crisis can start to turn their heads in search of a better place.
The number of Seniors and Leads who are open to offers has increased, and in any crisis situation specialists of this level are looking for something more stable, while the Middles remain attached to their current place until the final resolution of the situation in the company.
Easier to monitor the workflow
Middles and Juniors do more process work and can be assigned clear KPI. That’s why their work is easier to evaluate and track. Seniors often have architectural tasks and involvement in other projects. The line gets blurred, the “creativity” begins — the freedom to solve something, and at this point, there is a need to think through a complex system of evaluation of the Senior specialist… If a company needs expansion, research findings — then Seniors are needed. Junior and Middle workers can handle the rest.
Easier to adapt and fit into company processes
Junior and Middle can be trained to fit the company and the Senior, to raise them as they are needed. But Seniors already come in with a certain mindset of their own, which does not always fit with the company. The stress of adapting to a new company is much higher for Senior specialists than for Juniors and Middles, precisely because they have to change familiar processes to fit the company. Junior and Middle specialists either do not have such established habits as the experts, or have very few of them, so it is easier to adapt them to the culture and work of the company.
Come with fresh eyes
Junior and Middle specialists more often come from the market with something fresh, giving a new perspective on basic tasks. If a Senior sees such tasks, he either performs them quickly, as he is used to or tries to automate them. But Juniors and Middles can offer a new solution from their former place of work/study because for them the Seniors’ routine is a growth area. If a Senior comes from the outside, he can also contribute something new, but he is unlikely to want to reinvent the wheel.
Conclusion
All levels of specialists in the IT industry are important in their own way. Each does a certain job better than the other because they are more focused on it and ready for it. In any team, there are always leaders and those who work under them — you cannot reduce the entire team to one senior level, this system loses its footing.
