I Killed The Junior Engineer

A piece by melissa mcewen has been making the rounds here on Medium, titled Who Killed the Junior Developer?

This article examines a shift in startup hiring practices away from the entry-level positions that used to be far more common. She rightfully points out that without a robust job market for Junior Engineers, the overall ecosystem of software engineers will be siphoned of its life-blood, and grow smaller and smaller each day.

What she fails to point out is that startups don’t exist to nurture the overall ecosystem of software engineers — they exist to build products and make money. This is, after all, capitalism.

What she also fails to point out is that Junior Engineering track doesn’t breed great engineers — great engineers come from an intrinsic motivation to become great engineers, and deep, dedicated focus on development. Standard tracks only build mindless drones, not innovators.

I’ve stopped hiring Junior Engineers altogether. Junior Engineers are like parasites to the young startup. Not only does their productivity cost disproportionately high vs. more experienced engineers, they actively reduce the productivity of the more senior folk tasked with babysitting them.

Junior Engineers take longer to ramp up into your software platform, as they simply lack the language and understanding of the various options. Once they finally do ramp up, every single task becomes an educational nightmare, requiring numerous reviews to make sure it’s correct. By the time the task gets done, a more senior engineer could have done it twenty times over.

A lot of people talk about Lifetime Customer Value when evaluating a startup, because the cost to acquire a customer can be high. I like to also think about Lifetime Employee Value, as the cost to acquire a new employee is astronomically higher, both in terms of financial costs as well as the burden of time better spent elsewhere.

LEV consists principally of three different dimensions:

• Ramp-Up Time: The amount of time it takes the engineer to reach a meaningful level of productivity.
• Steady-State Skill-Level: The average level of productivity once the ramp-up period has been completed.
• Shelf-Life: How long the employee is likely to stick around.

Junior Engineers these days are weak in all three categories. They require vast resources to train up, they lack the knowledge to perform at a high level, and they lack the loyalty of our parents’ generation to stick around and repay the debt of their training.

I’ve been burned enough times that I’ve enacted a moratorium on hiring Junior Engineers at my company. While the lower salaries might seem like a bargain, paying twice as much for somebody with a few years of experience pays off far more than double.

The advent of developer bootcamps has only exacerbated the situation by flooding the market with weak candidates seeking Junior-Level Jobs. While I believe the education system for engineers needs radical redevelopment, most of these are no more than traditional diploma mill scams.

So what’s a recent grad to do? What happens to the market for Software Engineers when the availability of entry-level roles drops to zero? It’s not my job to give a shit. This problem, like most others, is best solved by the natural feedback systems of market forces.

If the education system is not producing engineers capable of delivering value, then the education system needs to be disrupted. As job prospects for traditional educational programs fall, their profitability will fall as well, and new competitors with better models will enter the market to best their forebears.

And failing a major shift in the institutions that train engineers, great engineers will continue to train themselves, innovating from the comfort of their homes. I don’t look much at job history or educational clout when hiring; I look at capabilities and proof.

Great engineers have a tendency to become great no matter the odds. It is an intrinsic inevitability which requires no external intervention. Great engineers also don’t look for Junior Engineer jobs, even when they first enter the job market. Established career tracks are for the weak.