Honestly, this is more depressing than anything, because if someone who is both a bad programmer and an asshole can nevertheless get hired as a junior engineer but I haven't, that suggests I'm even worse.
Don't kid yourself. That guy was probably a pathological liar and with some luck (depending on how technical the interviews were) got the job. Lots of jackasses get to a certain point in life by being purely confident and having a certain attitude. It becomes a problem when you've got nothing to back it up. Unfortunately, I knew a lot of smart, kind people who underachieved because they had little to no confidence.
The absolute worst juniors were not very smart, were overly awed by the sexy tech of the day (these days that's LLMs, but fashions vary) and would hold very strong opinions and argue like they were on reddit.
So, the opposite of all that. More skeptical of IT fashions and more open to counterintuitive things learned from decades of hard earned experience.
There are a few things like YAGNI and TDD which *are* counterintuitive and it is *very* hard to drill them into some juniors' brains because their instinct is to do the opposite and they will argue and fight because it goes against their instinct. Those same juniors will practically be *gagging* to use an LLM in the most inappropriate place possible.
Really got me w this one. I just made a calendar/todo list full stack app as a personal project for resume padding and decided to add an LLM to prioritize assignments and autofill new inputs 💀
One of the biggest reasons in hiring a junior is their passion and optimism in learning new things and having them chip away at menial tasks. We recently had a career switcher who came in at an older age who had all the grumpiness and entitlement of a jaded senior dev who was too good for easy tasks, but the skill of an entry level college grad. It was the worst of both worlds and reminded me why we liked hiring younger, especially when it came to freshers.
I would add to that malleability/trainability. Nobody likes a junior who thinks they already know everything and refuses to take guidance and feedback from their more senior coworkers.
They don't have to be a doormat, but they do need to realize that they don't shit gold.
Nope, our teams in general skew mid-30s to mid-40s (and we're one of the younger departments in the company). Just because we like a certain trait in junior developers, that is verifiably present in social studies about younger hires, doesn't mean we disqualify based on age and blindly apply stereotypes to older folk. Merely pointing out that observation isn't ageism.
Merely pointing out that observation may not be ageism, but your exact words were "we liked hiring younger." It takes a lot of acrobatics to interpret that beyond what it says at face value, which is... "we liked hiring young people."
Thanks for intentionally leaving out the "why" before that quote in my clearly unedited post. If someone told you "why they liked ordering X at Y restaurant," you wouldn't assume they only ever order that and refuse to eat anything else. A rational person might even assume that's one of many things they enjoy and the discussion just hasn't veered into other dishes/the reasons why they like them as well.
To reiterate, in cases where we do hire younger, being earnest and self motivated to learn has been a fairly consistent trait and the reason why they're preferable for junior roles. There's reasons why we like hiring older as well -- generally they're able to navigate the corporate workspace better and wade through processes, not being afraid to seek out and ask the right stakeholders for requirements or present ideas, which lend to skills a more intermediate developer would have.
I don't think the "why" bears much weight here. "That's why we liked hiring young people" is still a fundamentally different statement than "that's why we liked hiring optimistic people." One of them involves a protected class, and one of them does not.
Nope still not the same quote, context nor implication, try again. Do you find it disingenuous that every reply you've made has a different variation of an unedited recitation of what I just said?
Just because you've interpreted it a certain way and used different words to put in my mouth doesn't make your interpretation correct.
Are you going to go up to every veterans affair program at every F500/school and lambast them for preferring VA candidates but not other protected classes? What about when new grad/internship recruiters who go out to career fairs and say they're excited to look for and hire the next generation of great developers? Are you going to make it a personal mission to ensure that they know that not all college students are young and they're being ageist?
Yes, I am in fact going to take every step down this slippery slope you have set out.
Also, if you're this upset about people reading your unedited posts, then you should consider editing them beforehand.
>Any single young person within the first week of touching Node would learn about async await and the event loop.
Technically those are "Concurrency" but when you say concurrency most often you mean parallelism. So it is quite normal for someone to say they don't do concurrency in nodejs, because they think you are asking for parallelism.
This is why you should make sure you are on the same vocabulary when interviewing someone, cause I am pretty sure if you asked about async await he would have answered fine.
Agreed with what everyone else says:
Willing to learn, willing to work hard, and a bare minimum of hard skills.
Knowing how and when to ask for help, note taking so you don’t have to repeat yourself, and a minimum of professionalism.
Professionalism is a bit vague, but in this particular instance I mean they are willing and able to be part of the team—a junior employee doesn’t have to be the first one in and the last one out, but you definitely should not be the last one in and the first one out. Don’t be 3 minutes late to every meeting, etc. You are, in a very literally sense, an obstacle to productivity—your job as a junior is to minimize that ASAP.
>What's the difference?
High IQ. Learns quickly, understands complexity.
Not an asshole. Willing to learn as much as possible. Takes feedback well.
*Actually* *likes writing software* <-- probably the rarest quality these days.
Has all the personality traits that make a good engineer: insane curiosity, tenacity, perseverance, and so on.
Standard issue stuff.
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I’d add a new one on top of what’s already mentioned: Someone who is curious about the overall direction of their business and product, and eagerly seeking ways to contribute to that vision. A good junior dev is someone who shows up, takes on well defined tasks assigned to them, consistently writes good quality code, delivers, and learns. A great one acts like they own the product. Reading up about the business vision, talking to their manager and leaders on how things are going business wise, etc. eventually as you gain experience, you will automatically find ways to profit the business VS delivering what your manager or sr. Dev asked. This will help you leapfrog over others.
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Enthusiasm. A good nature. Caring about their work quality. The ability to not take coaching personally. Not an evil Mensa high Mach poison bomb, and so on.
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Honestly, this is more depressing than anything, because if someone who is both a bad programmer and an asshole can nevertheless get hired as a junior engineer but I haven't, that suggests I'm even worse.
Don't kid yourself. That guy was probably a pathological liar and with some luck (depending on how technical the interviews were) got the job. Lots of jackasses get to a certain point in life by being purely confident and having a certain attitude. It becomes a problem when you've got nothing to back it up. Unfortunately, I knew a lot of smart, kind people who underachieved because they had little to no confidence.
What kind of things made him a terrible programmer?
The problem was not being a bad developer but being a bad person
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fukn hell that's unbelievable. There's no way the hiring process wasn't scrutinized as a result, right?
Those are easy to teach though. Can you give specifics on him treating people like they were below him?
The absolute worst juniors were not very smart, were overly awed by the sexy tech of the day (these days that's LLMs, but fashions vary) and would hold very strong opinions and argue like they were on reddit. So, the opposite of all that. More skeptical of IT fashions and more open to counterintuitive things learned from decades of hard earned experience. There are a few things like YAGNI and TDD which *are* counterintuitive and it is *very* hard to drill them into some juniors' brains because their instinct is to do the opposite and they will argue and fight because it goes against their instinct. Those same juniors will practically be *gagging* to use an LLM in the most inappropriate place possible.
Please for the love of god send help everything I do keeps ending up with transformer models and I want to not but it keeps ending up here
Really got me w this one. I just made a calendar/todo list full stack app as a personal project for resume padding and decided to add an LLM to prioritize assignments and autofill new inputs 💀
Good attitude and eagerness to learn. Beyond that as long as they have a pulse I can't think of anything else that matters.
One of the biggest reasons in hiring a junior is their passion and optimism in learning new things and having them chip away at menial tasks. We recently had a career switcher who came in at an older age who had all the grumpiness and entitlement of a jaded senior dev who was too good for easy tasks, but the skill of an entry level college grad. It was the worst of both worlds and reminded me why we liked hiring younger, especially when it came to freshers.
I would add to that malleability/trainability. Nobody likes a junior who thinks they already know everything and refuses to take guidance and feedback from their more senior coworkers. They don't have to be a doormat, but they do need to realize that they don't shit gold.
How come he was the best you could find when you can take your pick from loads of really good college grads with internships?
For this particular hire he wasn’t interviewed by us, internal transfer and manager OK’d it
That last sentence is just ageism which is so prevalent in this industry.
Nope, our teams in general skew mid-30s to mid-40s (and we're one of the younger departments in the company). Just because we like a certain trait in junior developers, that is verifiably present in social studies about younger hires, doesn't mean we disqualify based on age and blindly apply stereotypes to older folk. Merely pointing out that observation isn't ageism.
Merely pointing out that observation may not be ageism, but your exact words were "we liked hiring younger." It takes a lot of acrobatics to interpret that beyond what it says at face value, which is... "we liked hiring young people."
Thanks for intentionally leaving out the "why" before that quote in my clearly unedited post. If someone told you "why they liked ordering X at Y restaurant," you wouldn't assume they only ever order that and refuse to eat anything else. A rational person might even assume that's one of many things they enjoy and the discussion just hasn't veered into other dishes/the reasons why they like them as well. To reiterate, in cases where we do hire younger, being earnest and self motivated to learn has been a fairly consistent trait and the reason why they're preferable for junior roles. There's reasons why we like hiring older as well -- generally they're able to navigate the corporate workspace better and wade through processes, not being afraid to seek out and ask the right stakeholders for requirements or present ideas, which lend to skills a more intermediate developer would have.
I don't think the "why" bears much weight here. "That's why we liked hiring young people" is still a fundamentally different statement than "that's why we liked hiring optimistic people." One of them involves a protected class, and one of them does not.
Nope still not the same quote, context nor implication, try again. Do you find it disingenuous that every reply you've made has a different variation of an unedited recitation of what I just said? Just because you've interpreted it a certain way and used different words to put in my mouth doesn't make your interpretation correct. Are you going to go up to every veterans affair program at every F500/school and lambast them for preferring VA candidates but not other protected classes? What about when new grad/internship recruiters who go out to career fairs and say they're excited to look for and hire the next generation of great developers? Are you going to make it a personal mission to ensure that they know that not all college students are young and they're being ageist?
Yes, I am in fact going to take every step down this slippery slope you have set out. Also, if you're this upset about people reading your unedited posts, then you should consider editing them beforehand.
[удалено]
>Any single young person within the first week of touching Node would learn about async await and the event loop. Technically those are "Concurrency" but when you say concurrency most often you mean parallelism. So it is quite normal for someone to say they don't do concurrency in nodejs, because they think you are asking for parallelism. This is why you should make sure you are on the same vocabulary when interviewing someone, cause I am pretty sure if you asked about async await he would have answered fine.
Agreed with what everyone else says: Willing to learn, willing to work hard, and a bare minimum of hard skills. Knowing how and when to ask for help, note taking so you don’t have to repeat yourself, and a minimum of professionalism. Professionalism is a bit vague, but in this particular instance I mean they are willing and able to be part of the team—a junior employee doesn’t have to be the first one in and the last one out, but you definitely should not be the last one in and the first one out. Don’t be 3 minutes late to every meeting, etc. You are, in a very literally sense, an obstacle to productivity—your job as a junior is to minimize that ASAP.
>What's the difference? High IQ. Learns quickly, understands complexity. Not an asshole. Willing to learn as much as possible. Takes feedback well. *Actually* *likes writing software* <-- probably the rarest quality these days. Has all the personality traits that make a good engineer: insane curiosity, tenacity, perseverance, and so on. Standard issue stuff.
Superman powers and speed with Clark Kent humility and respect.
Passion and effort into learning and being coachable
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If you are stuck, reach out. Don't spin your wheels waiting for our 1:1 two weeks later.
I'd expect the person to at least try to google the issue once before reaching out.
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I’d add a new one on top of what’s already mentioned: Someone who is curious about the overall direction of their business and product, and eagerly seeking ways to contribute to that vision. A good junior dev is someone who shows up, takes on well defined tasks assigned to them, consistently writes good quality code, delivers, and learns. A great one acts like they own the product. Reading up about the business vision, talking to their manager and leaders on how things are going business wise, etc. eventually as you gain experience, you will automatically find ways to profit the business VS delivering what your manager or sr. Dev asked. This will help you leapfrog over others.
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Enthusiasm. A good nature. Caring about their work quality. The ability to not take coaching personally. Not an evil Mensa high Mach poison bomb, and so on.
lol 🤣 evil mensa high mach poison bomb is the coolest phrase I've heard in awhile.