How the New Grad Apocalypse Is Going to Shake Out | Hacker News Reader

How the New Grad Apocalypse Is Going to Shake Out

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11 pointsbarry-cotter8 comments

The issue I see is new grads will join the team and we’ll be told they will only be around for 6-12 months. No one with any seniority wants to waste their time training someone who won’t be sticking around. Even if we’re not told this explicitly, the new mantra being repeated by the masses is to job hop into promotions and pay raises.

Anytime I take time out of my day to train or mentor someone else, it is with the expectation that the training will pay off down the line. They will be able to take work off my plate, write code I can more easily review and work with, or train people who come after them. If they aren’t sticking around, none of that will happen, so it’s not really worth the investment.

People who hire in as seniors, but have a track record of job hopping, get treated the same way. People with 15-20 years at a company aren’t going to go out of their way for someone who is only sticking around for 1 project. Those people don’t have any skin in the game and are treated as such.

Makes sense. But I would most likely leave in 6-12 months because of that kind of culture.

If someone joins who does seem like they will stick around, the senior people will give them a lot of time and invest in them.

I’ve spent significant time training and mentoring new people. Any time they ask me something I’ll drop everything to help them, as I don’t want them to think I’m ever too busy for them. My default is assuming someone is going to stick around, unless their words or actions tell me otherwise.

And this is where the fallacy of judgement lies, people do not make objective decisions and assume based on random factors.

Imo, only similar type of people get the attention which they can usually use better at another company making more but sucks for the senior. Hence, mentoring should be done selflessly based on who needs it most as it ends up increasing the average and hopefully some other senior somewhere trains your new hire.

Where are the internal promotions then? If there were enough of them, the masses would be chanting to remain at one company and build seniority. Job hopping is a consequence of companies’ nepotism and horizontal hiring strategies.

I think people lack patience. I worked my way up from an entry level admin position to a principal engineer. It probably took around 8-10 promotions. Some promotions took longer than I would have liked due to various economic conditions, and I took initiative to go above and beyond the job I was in at the time, but that’s generally what it takes. I didn’t mind it, as I found that work more interesting and enjoyable.

I will agree that companies can and should do more to retain people if they want people to stick around. For instance, when I started there was a pension, which no longer exists. They also made it clear during the hiring process that they like people who stick around, though I don’t get that vibe anymore.

At the same time, new hires need to be realistic. Some of them hired in and claimed to be experts, knowing everything there is to know about the job they were doing, in about 6 months, and started asked about promotions. First, promotions are reviewed annually, so expecting one after 6 months wasn’t realistic. Second, thinking they knew everything showed just how little they knew. They were still constantly asking for help and had large gaps, but instead of worrying about getting better to earn the promotion, they felt entitled to it after a very short period. I did the job they were doing, at some level, for about 6 years and there was still a ton of stuff I didn’t know (and still don’t)… and I wrote 90% of the documentation, procedures, and training material. I’ve only seen 1 or 2 people be reasonably self-sufficient in less than a year, and those people were never arrogant about it the way many others were, they still recognized there is always more to learn.

While I might have been able to make more early in my career if I job hopped, I think I would have capped out at a lower level, as my biggest and most frequent promotions came during a period where my knowledge of the internals of the company were of a lot of value. That isn’t something that can be hired; it takes time.

I feel like this tweet is basically how things already work? Most midsize SW businesses are primarily hiring experienced devs. I see only the big cos and small shops hiring people out of college (and in the later mostly likely there is someone you know) which seems like the same as in finance.

I believe that's an on-going dilemma. New grads often have unrealistic expectations, that's why today job hopping is the new norm. When you invest your time and energy into training or mentoring someone, you want to see some long-term payoff.

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