Ask HN: What is the market like for junior software engineers? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is the market like for junior software engineers?

4 pointsadamzerner15 comments

Everyone talks about how there is such a shortage of engineers and that they're in such high demand. But I sense that this refers to SENIOR engineers. What's the market like for JUNIOR ones?

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1. Let me tell you the secret: if you call and market yourself as junior, then you WILL be limited to junior opportunities. The idea that someone is a junior engineer is a self-limiting and self-filtering belief. Very few companies will say they want junior employees, for good reason (there is something amateurish about calling yourself a junior employee - I can't quite put my finger on it). But that doesn't mean that when a company advertises a "[Normal] Software Engineer" position, you're disqualified (you aren't). Most fresh college grads I know don't call themselves junior engineers; why should you?

2. The market for senior developers is red-red hot. The market for normal software engineers (including junior, entry-level, whatever labels you want) is merely "hot" - but there is still plenty of opportunity to go around. What bohnej is saying doesn't align with what I've seen in SV.

Thanks, that's a great point about limiting yourself. I appreciate it!

Not good. There are very very few junior developer jobs. Everyone wants senior or lead developers in 2014. Possibly the only junior developer jobs these days are in very remote locations where they can't find any senior developers.

"The only junior developer jobs" seems a bit extreme. I'm in Cambridge MA (not exactly the middle of nowhere) in my first year after college at a company frequently interviewing junior people, even if we talk to more senior people. I also had lots of friends in college who got jobs as developers, most of them in the Bay Area.

To be honest, the biggest mistake I've seen entry-level engineers make is not applying for every job.

|Everyone wants senior or lead developers in 2014.

This has literally always been the case. They want a senior engineer. They'll accept you.

There seems to be a chicken-egg problem here. How do you get to be a senior developer if you can't find a job as a junior one?

Living in SF, I also feel like this issue pertains to the tech industry in general, for non-programming jobs. In my girlfriend's experience, tech startups are looking for people who have had tech experience prior, even in Sales, AM, Customer Support, and other more entry-level-leaning roles.

1. I don't think there is a universal standard for "junior level" anymore. If you have a year's worth of working with Rails across the stack in a production setting, you are more than capable of landing a decent job in SF (not Senior or Lead, of course)

2. I can't quantifiably say there's a shortage, but I'd have to guess the amount of decent "juniors" that code bootcamps are pumping out are hurting the market if you're a junior competing for the same jobs in web. The bootcamps are collectively graduating thousands of students per year in San Francisco alone. HN doesn't think favorably of this lot, but they are hard workers, have learned modern programming conventions and best practices, and are desperate for work.

Caveat to #2: You can differentiate from this group if you basically _aren't_ a Ruby/Rails or Javascript dev, since those are the primary languages taught.

What are you saying in #2?

- Are bootcamp grads further along than juniors?

- Are bootcamp grads taking the jobs away from juniors?

a. It's hard to say because as I admitted in 1, it's hard to know what "Junior" qualifies for anymore, and I'm unsure of what your metric is for it. If you'd like, we can talk separately and I can try to give you an honest assessment (I conduct engineering interviews at a YC '12 company) of where you stand in relation to what I perceive to be other juniors (and bootcamp graduates).

b. Yeah - bootcamp grads are taught to go after these junior-facing roles (and even forego internships), so this is definitely the market you're competing with, assuming you're Junior as well. Once again, I can only really speak for SF and in web.

I should have mentioned but I'm starting a bootcamp (Fullstack Academy) in 2 weeks. I thought that I'd be considered junior after I graduate and was wondering about the future.

If you wouldn't mind, I'd love to do some sort of assessment to see where I am. It's not too important (just curiosity really) so if you have other priorities I completely understand, but if you've got time HMU - azerner3@gmail.com.

We don't typically recruit junior developers being a startup as we want the person to hit the ground running. But bigger companies sure do hire junior developers as they have the leeway to groom them for bigger tasks.

I'm sure there are enough avenues for junior developers, purely going by the salaries that are being doled out by these companies for INTERNS, what with $4,000-$6,000/month salaries. For INTERNS!

Depends on what geographical locations you're interested in and what industries you're considering (web startups, big internet companies like Google, finance/trading, enterprise software, embedded systems, etc.). Some more information about what you're looking for would be helpful.

Web startups/internet companies.

Companies don't want to have to train people at all now, especially startups. So my advice to the OP would be to freelance until he can confidently call himself a senior developer.

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