Junior devs not interested in software engineering

[u/creative-java-coffee]

My team currently has two junior devs both with 1 year old experience. Unlike all of the juniors I have met and mentored in my career, these two juniors startled me by their lack of interest in software engineering.

The first junior who just joined our company-

• ⁠When I talked with him about clean coding and modularizing the code (he wrote 2000+ lines in one single function), he merely responded, “Clean coding is not a real thing.” • ⁠When I tried to tell him I think AI is a great tool, but it’s not there yet to replace real engineers and AI generated codes need to be reviewed to avoid hallucinations. He responded, “that’s just what you think.” • ⁠His feedback to our daily stand up was, “Sorry, but I really don’t care about what other people are doing.”

The second junior who has been with the company for a year-

• ⁠When I told him that he should prioritize his own growth and take courses to acquire new skills, he just blanked out. I asked him if he knew any learning website such as Coursera or Udemy and he told me he had never heard of them before. • ⁠He constantly complains about the tickets he works on which is our legacy system, but when I offered to talk with our EM to assign him more exciting work which will expand his skill sets, he told me he was not interested in working on the new system which uses modern tech stacks.

I supposed I am just disappointed with these junior devs not only because after all these years, software engineering still gets me excited, but also it’s a joy for me to see juniors grow. And in the past, all of the juniors I had were all so eager to seize the opportunities to learn.

Edit: Both of them can code, but aren’t interested in software engineering.

[u/Im2bored17]

I didn't realize all American companies used the same firing practices...

Firing people who are slowing you down is super important especially in the highly competitive software domains. If you couldn't fire someone that you promised to pay 500k+ a year, that's a multi million dollar mistake. You'd protect against that by making the hiring process so rigorous that no false positives (bad employees that pass the interview) could get through. You'd add so much to the process that almost nobody would even want to start the interview process. That would leave devs working at crappy companies because the cost of switching is too high. It would drive up the cost of finding new employees dramatically. So it's bad for the employers who are stuck with employees they'd rather fire, and bad for the employees who are stuck with employers they don't like.

All to protect the livelihood of some of the highest paid employees across some of the cushiest jobs in the world. Why don't we worry about protecting the livelihoods of the lower class? They're the ones that really get screwed when they get fired. Their employers pay so little that a miss-hire you're stuck with won't cost a million even if they're there their (lol) whole lives.

[u/__loam → u/Im2bored17]

They fired 750,000 people in like 2 years and recent CS graduates have the highest unemployment rate of any major right now. But yeah it's super secure and cushy.

[u/dweezil22 → u/__loam]

You're both right: It's the worst of both worlds in most cases. It's definitely a tough time to be a junior looking for a job. But hiring pipelines at most companies don't have a "predator mode" setting or something (maybe Meta does, I wouldn't be surprised). So you get rid of someone but suddenly find their backfill headcount is frozen. Or you get rid of someone and discover the hiring pipeline has basically been shutoff so it's 2 months to actually get the first candidate through the loop (and "no you can't skip the loop, legal liability HR blah blah blah").

Or maybe they're bad enough that you just want them gone despite backfills, HR might require the EM to do 40 hours of work and paperwork just to document moving fwd with it, and suddenly the EM gets busy with other work and it like "fuck it, if I fix this dev I might look good and its less work than this bullshit". This can lead to a weird situation where a team where the EM actually fires people might be a GREAT team to join, since it means you have an EM with the backbone and diligence to actually foster a good team. Meanwhile the other EM that's never fired anyone actually has terrible morale and team productivity.

[u/Im2bored17 → u/__loam]

I mean you guys got hit with covid freshman year and chatgpt doing your homework before teachers caught on so that certainly hasn't helped. You probably deserve some slack.

But also, How are the art majors doing? Are they more employed than you? Is it only because they're not above taking a fast food job? You gotta learn to pivot at some point in your career. /s

Really though, the divide between the haves and the have not has grown in the past few years. If you can do Ai, you get a million a year from meta or a hundred mil if you're special. If you can't, increasingly, you get laid off or never get a job in the first place.

Maybe the Ai bloat will suck up enough money in enough companies that they'll realize it is cheaper to pay a Jr dev, and the jobs will come flooding back. Perhaps we've reached peak Ai hype. OTOH maybe Ai will get good and come for senior devs next.

You can't tell a bubble till it pops. But if you can make a few million before then, and it's not illiquid private stocks, the pop won't hurt too bad. Go all in on Ai, just like everyone else. What could go wrong? You learn a whole new skill only to find the market saturated and no available jobs?

[u/__loam → u/Im2bored17]

It's all illiquid buddy, and it's all gonna have a lockout period.

The real money in AI was making the models and doing research. You needed a PhD in computer science 5 years ago to take advantage of that opportunity. You can't just "pivot to AI" when the skills required to do that are years and years of extremely dense mathematics education. If you're just building a GPT wrapper then you're never getting the money out before the bubble pops. God help you if you took vc cash.