In my experience, almost everyone in college would get an internship Junior / Senior year and convert into an FTE after graduation. Those that were not so talented or not so lucky usually struggled to find work, taking many months to finally land a job. Most typically at a Booz Allen Hamilton type of place that was just throwing bodies into seats.
At all of my employers, I’ve never really seen any openings for Juniors, only Mid and Senior positions. The few Juniors we did bring on outside of an internship pipeline were either internal transfers, e.g. a SOC analyst given a chance or a nepotism type of hire.
I got a CS bachelors from a decent state school, nothing fancy, and everyone I kept in touch with had found an entry level role pretty quickly after graduation.
I did do an internship and had an offer from them, but the psy was pretty low and I really didn't want to move where they were. It was a bit stressful turning that down early senior year without a backup yet, but I ended up with quite a few interviews and an offer before graduation.
Companies now need to leave pre-revenue and turn a profit, or if you’re an established company you need to cut costs/increase margins from other economic headwinds (tariffs, inflation, gov policies etc)
A Junior dev (and most devs onboarding) will typically require 6-8 months to start being able to meaningfully contribute, then there’s a general oversight/mentorship for a few years after.
Yes they produce, however I think junior’s market salary plus the opportunity cost lost of the higher salaried mid and senior level in mentoring is a hard pill to swallow.
The team i work on is stretched very thin, and even after layoffs (which management agreed they went too far with) it’s pulling teeth to get another dev to build things companies are begging for and even willing to separately pay cash upfront for us to build
If you’re getting into the current job market as a junior, you’ll likely need to go heavy in the buzzword tech, accept a position from a smaller company that pays substantially less, then in 1-2 years job hop into a higher paying mid level role (not to say 1-2 years makes anyone mid level imo)
No one wants to hire juniors, but when the alternative is too expensive they are an acceptable solution.
Or if you have some incentive structure where you can get more work out of them like consultancies.
With a market flooded with senior people accepting a paycut for a job why even attempt hiring juniors?