The Broken Senior-Only Developer Market

[@SoftwareDeveloperDiaries]

Are you a beginner software developer? What do you think of the current job market in your area? Feel free to share!

[@botondbenyovszky6621]

It's even worse. I have 6 years of C++ work experience, 2 of them were combined with Unreal Engine. But because I worked in the Simulation industry, instead of the Game Industry, no game studio gives me even an interview or a test task, since they all require "Game Development experience".

[@ParamountRaven]

market is flooded.

[@Jenkkimie]

Finding work has been difficult. Graduated in June 2023 and most job opportunities here in Finland and overbroad are for seniors. I have 2-years of work experience and top notch grades (not that it matters that much) but that's not good enough. If I get lucky there are junior frontend positions available although I am training for and wish to be a fullstack developer. I get why companies focus on seniors since a lot of them are also looking for new work now, but dang is it hard to make it in the industry now as a junior.

[@Bioniclema90]

I wasted the last 3.5 years of my life and $10k getting through a web software development associates degree program at my local tech college, only to graduate and encounter this situation. I even did research before enrolling and saw a bunch of articles about how software development is one of the most in demand fields atm. What they failed to mention is "...Junior devs need not apply". I hate my life. The promise of a career after college has entirely consumed my 20s and I want it back.

[@BobrLovr]

@@Bioniclema90 I almost guarantee someone at some point told you that you can learn all of that shit for free and in half the time on google. Infact that's how most programmers know how to program

[@MrGonci]

Basically, your advice is: to succeed as a junior developer, become a senior developer. Awesome.

[@fieldmojo5304]

Yeah this video should be about getting your foot in the door. As a principal engineer, I don't look at experience or education in interviews: instead I go in and destroy the candidate with tests and questions. Unfortunately I don't decide who I interview.

[@Airdel]

@@fieldmojo5304 destroy the candidate with test and questions, if it breaks but has the mindset of "Ok, how do I Improve this?" that's ✅✅

[@DeepTitanic]

"Delete your social life be like the wolf of wall street"

[@herrDOS]

If you’re sad, don’t be sad

[@qingyangzhang6093]

Exactly. Nowadays I carry both the words "senior" and "staff" in my title, yet my pay is less than what I interviewed for three years ago, and routine in my daily work feels more restrictive. In other words, I felt like an intern when I was a junior, and a junior now that I'm senior.

[@CarKiller92]

Not only you need to be a senior dev, you need to have THE EXACT SAME skillset they need, be that the exact same stack, exact same field knowledge, everything. If they have to teach you anything, then you are not a senior dev in their eyes, instant rejection with 'we are looking for someone more senior'. This is why the IT job market is insane, most companies are looking for unicorns for junior dev salary.

[@johnblomberg389]

Okay so I see this issue being posted a lot.. What you do is that you look up the skillset that they require, you watch some KZbin tutorials on whatever you don't already know in that stack. Maybe spend like 3-4 hours on this, just to have a very brief understanding of the core concepts. In the interview you tell them that you have loads of experience with these tools and then you namedrop some of the core concepts just to make them understand that you are a genius with decades of experience in these areas... First of all you probably won't even need to know everything they posted in the reqs for the job since they bullshit stuff all the time.. if you end up getting the job you spend like a week or two learning the basics that you need to complete your job and then you take it from there. Rule #1 in this job market is "Fake it until you make it", you have to adapt to insane requirements and recruiters who have no knowledge of the tech stacks they advertise. I don't like it but that's just reality right now

[@loth4015]

@@johnblomberg389 This is unironically what CEOs do all the time. -

[@username7763]

Unfortunately this does happen a lot and I think it is bad practice. When I interview a candidate, I ask them questions about the skills they claim to have not the ones I wish they had. If they are strong in what they've learned, odds are they will quickly become strong in our tech stack. Technologies and projects change, it doesn't make sense to hire someone who aligns with your current tech stack. Don't you want to be able to adopt something new without re-hiring everyone? No one thinks this way.

[@username7763]

@@johnblomberg389 Well that explains a lot of candidates I've weeded out. I am tired of all the people who have claimed to have years of experience in something but doesn't know any details on how it works. I would have given them a chance if they had been honest. Ok if the tech stack doesn't align, never ok to lie.

[@johnblomberg389]

You have to get past clueless HR people though.. if you don't have experience with Node.js 21.5 (you only have experience with 21.4) then it's bye bye for your resume. Basically, you have to be pragmatic and you need to know how to game the system a little bit. I don't like it but the game is the game... @@username7763

[@ItsRyanStudios]

What's worse is that senior positions often involve management, and many of us just don't want that, we just want to write code.

[@JEsterCW]

fax

[@defaultdefault812]

thats the future, get out of tech if you don't want it.

[@invictuz4803]

The worst is when you're a junior yourself and they give you management responsibilities and you barely have time to code and maintain your skills.

[@genechristiansomoza4931]

​@@defaultdefault812That's not the future

[@BTrain-is8ch]

What type of management functions are you talking about?

[@Biffcutwtright]

Step 1. Devote every waking hour to learning the skills of a senior, full stack developer Step 2. Do tons of work for free to build experience, make sure you neglect any other hobbies and/or relationships otherwise you literally are not grinding hard enough. Step 3. Make sure to grind on l33tcode as well, doing completely irrelevant algorithm puzzles which will come in handy on interview day then never again Step 4. Apply to 1000+ jobs (keep your head up champ!) Step 5. On (the first) interview day, assuming you passed the technical interview (unlikely) prepare for a week of additional redundant interviews where different members of the staff check your vibe Congratulations, you are now qualified to make the nav a different shade of blue

[@cpK054L]

Leetcode doesn't help in my field

[@bravesonly]

Lol, that's what I did from 2014 to 2020 till I got an actually nice job opportunity. I'm coming from third world country though. It was always like that, I think that gen z were just overpromised and now meeting the actual reality. Sometimes you have to grind in order to get to something 🤷‍♂

[@nicelypenn]

@@bravesonly The grind is bullshit.

[@dinahlizett]

This! As a Sr dev I find all this hiring process ridiculous. Give the candidate a test that actually pertains to what their day to day would be.

[@darkwoodmovies]

@@nicelypenn "The grind" is fine as long as it elevates you average to exceptional. Doesn't really have the same ring when you need to grid just to get started, at that point it's basically just exploitation - or if you're a capitalist, a bad market fit... lol

[@nagytamas97]

How to get a job: Give up your life and learn everything (very realistic). If that's true, the industry is fucked and beyond repair.

[@vectoralphaSec]

Yeah. Only a matter of time till the industry collapses. AI will only accelerate this.

[@wojciechsobiesiak]

It starts from C, but If You're heading toward job way It may be not the solution. "Learn everything" you're hurry anywhere?

[@hschan5976]

Its the reason why birthrates are dropping through the floor. But with globalization they don't need people in rich countries to make babies any more. It's much cheaper to import people from abroad. Welcome to the final stage of civilization where everything becomes too expensive and need to be outsourced, including human reproduction.

[@whatisrokosbasilisk80]

@@wojciechsobiesiak Yes, away from starvation.

[@wojciechsobiesiak]

@@whatisrokosbasilisk80 I had anaemia 2 years ago xD have pushed my life to the limit xD 20 year long story for the movie xD As in Batman "now I'm always smiling" now I see the light xD I have met bad people and now I'm part of society xD and from last 10 minutes I have 11th subscriber xD

[@sdwone]

We're on a ticking time bomb here because ALL industries relies on new blood to come on board as older employees retire. And if we are foolish enough just to leave it all to AI, then we are willingly diving head first into the Abyss!!!

[@suckmyartauds]

I'm guessing the execs making these decisions don't really care about how the company will be doing 5 yrs from now cuz they might have a different job or they are so old they will retire by then lmao

[@seriouscat2231]

Leaving something to AI is like leaving it to the tooth fairy. So few people have any clue what an AI can and what it can not do.

[@Al_L.]

People really do not know what AI can achieve. Much less than they expect, it is just a negotiation tool to lowball everyone in the indistry with no AI knowledge. Because people with actual AI knowledge are aware of how much BS these new AI gurus are selling to unsuspecting tech-bros.

[@SuprousOxide]

Ah, but you just assume that some other company will hire the juniors and get them the first years of on the job training and then you can benefit...

[@SuprousOxide]

Ah, but you just assume that some other company will hire the juniors and get them the first years of on the job training and then you can benefit...

[@arbarrro]

Reminds me of what I know about being a pilot. The airlines neglected their employment pipelines for years to cut down on costs; a new pilot would have to go through an extensive training process only to get a crummy job for a regional airline with low pay and long hours. A lot of older, more senior pilots were forced out due to the lack of air travel during the pandemic, and there's no one to take their place now, resulting in a major labor shortage. The airlines screwed themselves by focusing on short-term profit rather than the long-term viability of their labor market.

[@pepsi_kola]

This is what capitalism is all about. Short term profit for share holders. Nothing else.

[@WaltuhBlackjr]

@@pepsi_kolano blaming capitalism is too low effort of a scapegoat

[@sonalfernando7042]

This strategy is good in short term but in long-term companys will struggle with lack of senior developers because juniors are the one who become seniors.

[@chrisalexthomas]

Having no life... this is basically how you become a senior developer. You have to sacrifice your social time to do projects on your own and then use that experience to justify why you're more experienced than everybody else. This is basically how I did it. The 20-26 year part of my life was effectively "don't have friends, stay at home, learn everything about everything, build your own projects" and even then I was still classified as a junior for years afterwards

[@SoftwareDeveloperDiaries]

"Stay at home, build drones and print 3D objects" ;)

[@chrisalexthomas]

@@SoftwareDeveloperDiaries bingo! ;)

[@himanshujasaiwal3967]

i am also on sam route can i have your email or twitter for virtual coffee chat when you have time ?

[@robenwayne9060]

Damn, I think it is easier or the same effort to build a small business.

[@fitfuelplanner]

story of my life

[@vectoralphaSec]

This is how it plays out. No company ever hires entry level/ junior devs anymore. The current devs are senior devs or become senior devs. Then those senior devs retire and the company doesnt have any more employees and they cant hire anyone because they are all juniors who never got a chance to get professional experience to eventually become senior so the company collapses. That is what would happen.

[@vijayendranvijay457]

Maybe by the time those senior devs retire, the AI is so good that there is no need for devs anymore?

[@GackFinder]

@@vijayendranvijay457 Yeah that's never gonna happen.

[@parlor3115]

@@GackFinder lol

[@anonfourtyfive]

It's perfectly structured if you owned one the main monopoly company in the domain. you literally sabotage all competition.

[@awesomedavid2012]

​@@vijayendranvijay457not gonna happen if AI companies don't hire junior devs to maintain and build the thing

[@quyiter]

As a senior dev, the cloud team I'm on opted to hire contractors over junior devs. I pushed to get juniors we could train on our systems, but ultimately, it came down to budget and ramp up time. For the price of a junior dev that would need time to get ramped up and trained, we could hire a contractor that didn't need to be trained and didn't need to learn our systems since they'd only be there for 6-12 months anyway. Every dev on our team that is an employee is a Senior Developer. Were all seniors with 0 juniors. When I started 8 years ago I joined with a group of 30+ juniors and we got spread out across several teams. Completely different now.

[@freashty]

Your team is on the brink of collapse

[@IrrationalDelusion]

Country?

[@quyiter]

@@IrrationalDelusionUS

[@IrrationalDelusion]

@@quyiter Well at least you have capacity for living standards 3 to 6 times more than in Ukraine. Juniors are outsourced, probably because marketing, and without investment into new blood the core teams will dissipate slowly.

[@quyiter]

@@IrrationalDelusion Yes I make great money it's just a shame my company is now preferring a core of senior devs and backfill with Indian contractors they can pay dirt cheap.

[@logan4179]

These companies should not be allowed to lobby Congress for H1B visas if they're not hiring junior devs.

[@ishaanrawat9846]

agreed

[@jhonshephard921]

you realize they aren't just doing that right? You think its out of charity they hire high school or in my company's case even middle school students as interns? and they are pushing retirement age and social security further and further away. They know they are in a bind with the racism they cultivated funding the GOP and its propaganda in the mainstream media for years so now its on to child labor and elder abuse. Maybe stop watching Fox, CNN or OAN and try The Majority Report or TYT for some real pro-labor reporting.

[@Spacer-l3j]

why would you pay a junior when you can pay a senior and get straight to the business? Businesses have bills to pay no time to waste with juniors

[@logan4179]

@@Spacer-l3j Because senior developers don't just materialize out of thin air. When businesses truly never hire junior devs, the whole system breaks down. What are you even on about?

[@awesomedavid2012]

​@@Spacer-l3jbecause senior devs will retire sooner? Because junior devs will have more loyalty since they need it more since they have fewer skills to demonstrate? Since you can train a dev in your particular style instead of fighting 20 years of coding practices. So that you can pay them less than a senior dev.

[@etakarinae248]

MAJOR TIP: become a software tester first. No developer wants this position BUT you'll get a lot of experience which will be rewarded.

[@thefakewitchdoctor]

I was searching for this comment. Should be pinned.

[@lukashenrique4295]

Oh cool! Gonna research on this. Thx for pointing this out!

[@etakarinae248]

Furthermore, as a software tester you will see a lot of code in different styles for different purposes. AND wrt AI: would you rather use a program written by a human being and tested by AI or a program written by AI and tested by a human being? Saying, starting as a tester seems a safer way to start a career in software. The skills (human reasoning) are not replacable by AI.

[@Tvde1]

This is terrible advice. Only dysfunctional companies have a "software tester" role

[@thefakewitchdoctor]

@@Tvde1 Thanks for stopping by with your valuable wisdom. We are better off because of it. People must love your absolutism, and enjoy working with you.

[@luckerooni1153]

That's what happens when tens of thousands of people with the same skill but are more experienced get released to the job market at the same time.

[@internallyinteral]

It's almost like this was done on purpose to make people more desperate... Totally was never done in other industries before 😂😂😂

[@carloalberto4132]

@@internallyinteral it has more to do with the rise of interest rates.

[@TehDuckOfDoom]

Having a skill to read rect documentation and type is not the same as being even a little qualified as a developer/

[@web3wizard381]

fire to rehire cheaper yes@@internallyinteral

[@ryanE-g9z]

The exact same happened in the UK to those with law degrees.

[@mediamanager8950]

The sad thing is that this scenario seems to be affecting all IT roles. I have been hunting for a junior network engineer role for over 9 months now. Haven't managed to come across a single junior role that is asking for less than 5 years of professional experience and their skill requirements are typically that of a senior network engineer. In over 50% of the junior roles I have applied to I had 90% of what they were asking for but it seems that they get scared when ever it comes around to actual professional experience. You can know how to do everything, prove it, and they still won't hire you simply because you've never had an official job. Looks like the only way to get the job that you want is to already have the job you want.

[@noriller]

You have seniors, then Staff, Principal and whatever other naming. If everyone is senior+, then no one is senior there. Or better yet, senior is the new junior.

[@SoftwareDeveloperDiaries]

The ones who haven't seen this video won't be seniors :) Jk, good point!

[@marcusthatsme]

Everyone gets a gold start!

[@Hersatz]

As one of the two juniors in the world who found a job in the past 2 years, I am quite happy to know that there will be no competition for senior positions in 30 years due to everyone else changing profession in between.

[@viktorskarlatov8227]

lol :D

[@A.G.1.5000]

😂

[@marcoandreschmidt5859]

😂

[@liquidsnake6879]

Just lie about it, seriously, if you're being honest in the job market you're the only one, i assure you the company sitting across from you is not being honest in any of their dealings with you.

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

Facts but how do you deal with technical interviews? idk how these devs are finding roles that don't do testing, but every role I find makes me jump through 5+ phases of interviews 5-10 hours of HARD technical challenges and examination. That can't be faked

[@foreverskeptical1]

@@FirstLast-gk6lg Yepp all of this is BS, i think juniors need to look out of this tech industry and look at any other industries or non tech roles in tech, cause SWE is becoming hopeless for new grads/juniors

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

@borderlinegod it really does feel that way, I mean it's like running up a hill but the hill keeps getting steeper and steeper and so running faster doesn't even necessarily mean making forward progress

[@liquidsnake6879]

@@FirstLast-gk6lg Damn really? That's crazy, the most i ever came across was 2 phases and the questions weren't that hard, but i meant more in the case where you're technically capable but don't have the professional experience for them to consider you a senior or where you might not have a degree, but yeah if you're struggling with the interview questions then you'd need to work on that first.

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

@liquidsnake6879 I hear you man but I feel so out matched. Like I am running up an icy hill and no matter how fast I move my legs I don't make forward progress. Again idk where people find these 1 or 2 phase interviews with easy questions but every interview for me is this insane inquisition with questions that are WAY beyond the position. Like bro this is a Frontend React position why do I need to give a 1 hour presentation on architecture of a distributed system with at least 2 different technology solutions at each major point in the design... and that being only 1 of the phases... it's been 6 months man... idk how much longer I can do this

[@szilardfineascovasa6144]

There are Junior openings. Until you read the job description...and realize it's still Senior.

[@konfcyus4865]

I dont think become an end-to-end developer is good advice , it is good to know every aspect of development but being specialized in one will get anyone further than being mediocre at all of them. No serious company will let one person to build a full scale production ready app , that is basically mobbing.

[@reuven2010]

No, but you being able to is a plus i guess.

[@ward6238]

I have 3 software development jobs. One of them, which is part time, involves me building a production-ready app (end-to-end) by myself. Maybe they're not a serious company, but the paychecks hitting my bank account are pretty serious.

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

Either way, end-to-end or specialized, both take YEARS of experience just to be intermediate, at least 3 years.

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

@@ward6238 I would love some advice, in my 4th year in the industry, just got laid off a couple months ago, really struggling to find a mid-level position, failing Senior role interviews. I would literally take any software job right now, what methods do you use to find work?

[@silotx]

Most companies prefer cheap crappy working apps over expensive great quality ones though.

[@monterreymxisfun3627]

As a senior, in more ways than one, it's broken for seniors as well. It means doing junior work and being down skilled. Companies get a rude awakening when they discover how cranky seniors get when faced with idiocy from the company.

[@JP-hr3xq]

Yup. I'm a lead dev. I spent the past year doing nothing but adding one or two parameters to JSON responses and looking through logs for points of failure.

[@DavidManouchehri]

@@JP-hr3xqWhy not automate log analysis?

[@ESCAcarlos]

so in few words, graduate from colledge, work at mcdonals for 3 or 4 years studying harder, try to know it all and become all mighty, then may be after 8 years, you have to study even harder because the bars has risen again. BullS...!

[@SoftwareDeveloperDiaries]

Agree. As long as the fundamentals are there, who needs a formal degree? Maybe the only additional thing one learns at a university is discipline, but that can be acquired outside too.

[@Zuranthus]

@@SoftwareDeveloperDiaries the problem is companies are still requiring college degrees to even get an interview, and even if you lie to get through the ATS lots of companies will still not hire you if you don't have one, any direct or subcontracting government job has a hard requirement on degrees as well, so you are better off having a degree (any degree) than not having one

[@SoftwareDeveloperDiaries]

@@Zuranthus I would agree with you too, it really depends on what company you're dealing with

[@angelg3642]

@@ZuranthusJust straight up lie on your CV. Companies don't deserve transparency for their bs requirements

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

@hung8969 You're dead right, I avoided the CS degree but did a bootcamp and even the bootcamp in hindsight feels unnecessary

[@bettybunbun9664]

Yeah most companies don't give a shit about what private repos you have. Even as a mid/senior with almost 5 years professional experience in Django and React I tried to also show some interesting little projects I had worked on, in my cv, in my cover letter, and they just don't care. In fact, in all the job interviews I had I was never asked about my personal projects even once!

[@LowestofheDead]

That's really surprising and goes against everything I've heard - everyone says to have projects on your resume. Is that only true for junior devs where projects are the only experience you have?

[@bettybunbun9664]

@@LowestofheDead yes maybe for junior devs they might be more interested, if you can even find any junior developer positions these days. 😬

[@LinusScrubTips]

I have this exact issue. I just got my degree a year ago and couldn’t find a single software job without “5+ years experience.” Yet there’s tons of posting for senior positions not getting filled. My uncle who is a IT president said it’s 100% “false” listing to make it look like they’re hiring.

[@mf_rat]

Yep, ghost jobs.

[@YeetusMingus]

What's the point of doing that?

[@SandraWantsCoke]

@@YeetusMingus A company wants to show that it's doing OK and still hiring people when in fact it's not.

[@YeetusMingus]

@@SandraWantsCoke That should be illegal

[@SandraWantsCoke]

@@YeetusMingus No way to enforce it, hence it would not make sense to have such a law in place. They could even interview people and just not hire anyone. As for this practice, more than half of companies are doing it. I know it first hand.

[@electrictutorial1]

Had an argument with my company the other day. They put out an ad for a "Junior" DevOps engineer, requiring 3-5 years experience. I argued with them that this is not junior, it's just a DevOps engineer. Then they tried saying "well they don't know our stack and blah blah blah". I'm like look even someone has 15 years experience they don't know our shit. That's called training. They won't listen to me, it's been so frustrating.

[@lukashenrique4295]

If they find someone like that, good for them though. It's hard to gulp down the hard truth, but the market isn't fair play, it is for those who accepts such demands so...

[@ach_dev6554]

the bigger the company is, the bigger the clowns are that are running it

[@simongido565]

I have a few tips that worked very well for me. Git repo with some big project. It shows that you are into programming and that you are willing to learn in your free time so they do not have to pay you for learning. Second tip is to get your first job no matter what, do not care much about salary, just make them to hire you. Once you realize that you are an important member of a team and you do a lot of stuff for the company you can ask for a raise. Once you survived your first year in the company the entire job market opens for you, personally I refused many great offers ( because I liked the company I worked for ) but eventually there was an offer that I simply could not refuse ( money ). This is my experience, it may differ based on what area of programming you are interested in. Edit: I am talking about job market in Europe.

[@Dlntck]

So your tip to get a job as a junior, is...to get a job ?

[@simongido565]

@@Dlntck my tip is to ask for low salary

[@bawbbie7875]

I like your tips but I disagree with the last part. I worked at a company for about a year and now I've been on a job hunt for over half a year, in Germany.

[@simongido565]

@@bawbbie7875 What is your specialization in computer programming?

[@simongido565]

@@bawbbie7875 Different country different requirements I guess. But it still blows my mind that job market can be so different. Like a year ago I helped my friend to get a solid job as front end developer, I just told him what they are going to expect from him and where he should learn it. It took him 5 months and he got a job. Also one more thing I did in the past.... I applied for so many jobs that I had no idea which company is calling me to schedule an interview :D.

[@pdcx]

time for juniors make our own startup

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

Genuinely

[@sathvikraomp2006]

Whos gonna fund it lol

[@milanpospisil8024]

Or go to trades.

[@JonathanTheZombie]

@@sathvikraomp2006 investors?

[@sathvikraomp2006]

@@JonathanTheZombie Why would they invest on kids straight out of college with no industry experience lol

[@leochoome]

Companies in Japan are hiring a lot of junior devs atm. Absolute Pay is much lower, but relative to the local price not that bad. If you’ve always wanted to live in Japan, this is one of the best time. Japanese IT is quite behind so ironically a lot of devs are needed.

[@turolretar]

Nice try Japan, but I ain’t coming

[@amiralam1786]

woah, where should i apply? are they hiring remote devs?

[@straddle9012]

Where can I apply?

[@GackFinder]

If you have to ask where to apply to get a job in Japan, then you will probably not make the cut.

[@Charybdis47]

the work hours in japan are inhumane. the also have basically no worker rights.....

[@joelwillis2043]

This is the logical consequence of companies not investing in employees.

[@Steelrat1994]

This is the logical consequence of: - abysmal productivity of junior devs: In most circumstances adding a junior dev to a team is a net loss in productivity for months or even years, because they take a considerable amount of time of their seniors. - prisoners dilemma: The company that has invested money and time into a junior dev will lose that dev, as soon as he gets hunted for a higher salary at a company that doesn't invest into juniors. And they can afford higher salaries... because they don't have to spend money investing in junior devs.

[@peterkarman7843]

Need to stop only targeting FAANG or tech companies. Insurance companies hire junior devs all day long. “Prestige” is also a plague for juniors. Accept that 50k job, get your 1 or 2 years and then get paid

[@l2xsniper1]

I think the trend is more they want junior roles filled with senior level skills ie "junior dev role" requires 5 years experience, xyz certifications, masters or phd $65k base lol.

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

Shit you're lucky if they start you at 65k, my first role was 38k, second role was 72. Now I am between jobs, over qualified for Junior roles and under qualified for Senior roles, absolutely stuck

[@vectoralphaSec]

$65K for a junior dev role is perfect. That's what it should be. The problem is junior devs wanting and asking senior level salaries. I.e six figures $100k+ starting salaries.

[@summerwinter89]

@@vectoralphaSectech bois always want more. 200k starting.

[@okandokandast]

Essentially, the market for SW developers is becoming increasingly saturated. Partly due to market changes (layoffs and less start ups => less job opportunities), as well as more people wanting to work as SW developers (=> higher competition). This forces/allows companies to be increasingly picky with their choices of SW developers. To mitigate hiring risks, companies are playing it safe by going for "proven in use" senior SW devs, or only highly achieved junior devs with a good profile with many high quality commits to high value repositories @ your favorite cloud repository storage webpage. Just doing a short SW boot camp is most likely not going to cut it anymore when there are so many out there that have a huge passion for coding. The SW developer market is becoming cut throat.

[@halgari]

As a team lead who has hired several people in multiple jobs over the past few years, I wasn't sure if I'd agree with this video. But your analysis is spot on, and the advice is solid. One of the biggest issues with AI, and the fantastic dev tools we have today is that you kindof have to be an expert to know how to use them. If a senior dev is 3x of a junior dev (sometimes it's higher if the application is even more complex), then AI and high end tools can easily double that productivity factor. Which means in about 10-20 years we're gonna have a problem when the "old guard" retires.

[@aspenshadow7920]

I simply don't believe that junior developers are always less effective than senior developers. I have nearly 7 years in the industry. I've met some seriously clueless senior developers and some brilliant junior developers.

[@SandraWantsCoke]

Agree 100%. I sometimes ask myself how the hell some of the seniors even have a job.

[@keshavkannan5328]

Why would LinkedIn show a senior developer a junior developer job? It's called 'Jobs based on your profile' for a reason, isn't it?

[@SoftwareDeveloperDiaries]

Good catch, but it was my mistake using the wrong clip. Apparently the browser refreshed the page in the background and this time it was based on the profile. Although I’ve tried without this option and the results were pretty similar before that. And also, I’m not a senior :D

[@jwoods9659]

In other words be a engineer that can more work for less pay

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

Yes, while also passing interviews that are 2x or 3x beyond your relative experience. Oh it's a React.js position, well here's a 6 round interview including Case Studies, Pair Programming, System Architecture, Distributed Systems, and lets throw in 5-10 Leetcode Medium problems and give you 3-6 minutes per problem. THEN we may consider you for the role, and underpay you, and lay you off the moment you aren't stricktly needed.

[@jwoods9659]

I think alot of these problems are front end...@@FirstLast-gk6lg

[@foreverskeptical1]

Yepp we are in late stage capitalism

[@vanTersec]

Get good at something and just lie. Companies will lie about literally everything, there is no reason why you should not either, just get the skill to back it up.

[@joaquin67]

I almost predict The Great Developer Crash. A moment in time where too little seniors are available, and lots of junior developers are oppressed from being hired.

[@aaronlauretani8921]

The industry is unkind to newcomers now, or anyone short on senior-level professional experience. My one friend who has been coding informally in his free time for years and years needed over a year to finally land a job. Before that, he technically only had about a year and a half of formal job experience. His new job now pays him significantly less than he made teaching in China where I still currently live and work.

[@bharath2508]

You need experience to get a job but you need a job to get experience.

[@SandraWantsCoke]

catch 23

[@OB.x]

Yup. (sigh) 15 years of doing this as a hobby. Knowing my abilities, and I just get immediately looked over.

[@jakezepeda1267]

You are far from alone. I've technically been a full-stack dev for about 5 years not, but since it's not my official title and everything is internal and for this company, I may as well have done nothing. Even if I leave with the code, almost nothing would work without connections to company servers and PLCs.

[@GackFinder]

@@jakezepeda1267 Uhm... you're doing resumes wrong if you've worked as a full-stack dev for 5 years and not putting it in your resume.

[@RajinderYadav]

the job market is bad for everyone, but jr dev are going to be pushed out of the market for sure

[@wetter4293]

Let's also talk about the problem of hiring teams not knowing what to do WITH their senior developers - e.g. having them do junior / intermediate level work, and literally wasting money because everyone wants a senior, yet no one actually knows the type of work seniors are capable of....

[@ReneSaarsoo]

Exactly. In the last job I took as a senior developer I was tasked with implementing CSV import (repeatedly). I dared to complain that I find the job utterly boring and asked if there's perhaps some more challenging problems to tackle. Like solving the problem of this import logic being repeatedly built by different teams. The result: I was fired.

[@wetter4293]

@@ReneSaarsoo How dare you point out their incompetence! - Dude if I was the CEO, I'd be PISSED that we're wasting money on a senior and not even getting the benefits of it. Not to mention, I'd be pissed that there's all this EASY BS WORK LAYING AROUND! I see why people just PUT 5 years on their resume. If you're gonna get BS work, it makes no difference...

[@luga1398]

I grew up in France, where the demographic pyramid was pushing the situation you describe for all industries: lots of 40,50+ people, lots of young enterers, relatively fewer 5y exp workers. Added to a corporate culture where companies do not accept the fact that they need to invest in their employees, and want a ready to use workforce from the get go. The first result was what you describe to an extreme: looking for a junior, 1200 euros a month, with a Master’s in the field and 5 years experience. The end result was that everyone’s strategy was point 3 you mentioned: all of this is bullshit, so let’s sell them bullshit; my company is not investing in me, so I won’t invest in it; technical jobs don’t pay as much as management, I’ll skip the technical studies and go straight to business. It basically drew everyone to a lowest bidder strategy, with a high supply of useless business study people - that still get hired. From a cynical perspective I can understand the move: driving competition at the entry will lower the first pays, and will lead to engineers costing lower throughout their careers. But I think the long term costs of this trend will outweigh the mid term benefits. Bottom line: I feel sorry for people entering the market now, and grass in greener in Japan.

[@jst8922]

quote: The end result was that everyone’s strategy was point 3 you mentioned So what did you do ?

[@luga1398]

Short story is for me is: I quit the initial career, got into a depression for around 2 years, moved to Japan where the demography / corporate culture is different, started to study code on my own and then got lucky. The shorter story is therefore: I managed to reuse the cards I had in my hands (speaking jp etc), and I got lucky. Since the cards I had in my hands were not designed from the get go to lead me to coding, the conclusion is: I got lucky. I don’t want to end on a depressing note, here’s a quote from an ex teacher that helped me a lot through these years: an opportunity is randomness that one manages to find happiness in. Wish you guys lots of opportunities

[@Steelrat1994]

"Learn everything" - that's a shitty advice, tbh. It only works for people who already have decent experience and want to broaden their skillset to get better/more offers. Junior devs have next to zero real skills and thus are almost unhirable. Trying to get more surface level skills all across the board is a shitty tactic to get an entry level job. If and when you actually need that skill, you will be able to get it much faster, if it's actually your job to do so. My advice is: aim low, your goal is experience. Two years of shitty experience is far better than two years on bootcamps. Your revenue is also positive, not negative. In fact, two years of working on Big Ball of Mud systems might improve your skills more than working on state-of-the art systems that have already solved and have protected themselves from all the mistakes and pains you don't even know exist yet. My first job was at a software consulting company. The conditions were not great, the salary was way below the market average, I got stuck with a shitty tech stack and peers I couldn't respect as equals. But it buys food and most importantly it gets you experience and years on your resume.

[@filmonyoha7134]

But this is a risk as well, because brand names matter on resume as well.

[@Steelrat1994]

@@filmonyoha7134 if you're struggling to get your first job, you're not exactly in a position to be picky about brand names.

[@filmonyoha7134]

@@Steelrat1994 I understand that sentiment but, based on this context the goal was to start from small companies and build your way app but brand names will definitely set you apart from the others regardless of how many start up companies you worked with for instance there was an experiment done on this and an individual with higher brand name got more interviews in comparison to individual that has the same template and credentials but different brand name.

[@defaultdefault812]

You're fighting a losing argument, the situation is only going to get worse as AI gets more advanced. Developers need to start thinking more like like architects and consultants. Understanding system landscape end to end implementations understanding the range of products out there on the market the different technology stacks and what they are capable of. The days of purely coding are over.

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

I agree

[@OmegaF77]

Architects and consultants? That's even worse since those can easily be automated once the coding is perfected.

[@foreverskeptical1]

@@OmegaF77 maybe construction and farming is the way to go now

[@OmegaF77]

@@foreverskeptical1 😑

[@wasd713]

Looks like we are doomed, i will invest in farming

[@TheGodfather101]

the interest rate is really high in the us. That means all companies cannot budget hiring period. itll get better. keep the faith cs graduates.

[@huatzh]

As much as I know it will help, I really hate the idea of "becoming end-to-end developer" as a solution. Yes, you are going to be more competitive, but you likely going to work for those company that want you to fulfill multiple roles and expecting you to be one man engineering team.

[@DarkzarichV2]

Well, soon enough AI will just replace most of us anyway. The current devs who managed to get experience won't even retire before that happens. It starts with juniors

[@yuriy5376]

We've been hearing this for almost 50 years now 😂

[@somethingelse9228]

AI relies on code written by experienced developers. AI is not as smart as you think.

[@defaultdefault812]

yes it is, I am an SME in this space and you are going to be shocked at what is on the 5-10 year horizon.@@somethingelse9228

[@gehdochnicht]

@@somethingelse9228 did you overlook the part "it starts with juniors"?

[@GackFinder]

Yeah that's never gonna happen.

[@fabiolean]

Modern corporate leadership is a low information monoculture where everyone is both short sighted and tunnel-vision on unlimited stock growth. Two things which are actually counter to each other in the long term, but nobody cares. Profitability matters less than growth, velocity over quality. Struggling to be the next Facebook or Amazon when the market is so different than 2008. There's no way you COULD be by using the same playbook as 15 years ago, it's maddening.

[@thehowerd8634]

Here’s one thing I will say to all the juniors/students out there. Yes, things are getting more difficult. But there really isn’t a clearly defined definition of “Senior Software Engineer”. It’s all about experience and that doesn’t mean years worked. That means things built. If you’re just starting out, here’s what I would suggest: 1. If you’re new to a language take an online class to learn the fundamentals of the language. Learning the fundamentals will save you a ton of time in the future. 2. Build something. It could be anything. If you’re new, start out building small web components like a todo list or maybe an accordion menu or basic api calls. Once you get familiar with building basic things, try to focus on building something that genuinely interests you. Something that you legitimately get excited to work on. When you’re actually engaged with something because it provides meaning to your life or because it involves a passion or something you legitimately care about it will galvanize you to improve and motivate you to build something. Motivation is a key part of software engineering. All of the senior engineers out there know what I’m talking about. When you work on projects that are boring as shit or that don’t have any inspiring stories or ideas behind them you start to not give a shit and development becomes more of a chore than a fun, but challenging activity. 3. Network. Meeting cool people who are inquisitive and creative in the software world is also a huge opportunity. There are many developers out there who have some really interesting ideas and are constantly trying to build cool shit. Talk to those people. Ask them if you can potentially work on their projects. Even if you can’t, look at their GitHubs. See what they’re building. Analyze the architecture, the folder structure, the key components, the logic of those components, and how all of that culminates into a functioning app. Learning from other really smart people through just seeing what they’ve built can inspire you and give you insight in ways you may not be aware of. You can extrapolate from other people’s work and use that to build something for yourself. 4. Perseverance, patience and grit. The market is rough but it’s not impossible to land a job as a junior. Really just focus on standing out. Cultivate an insatiable appetite for knowledge. Never stop learning and just realize that it’s all one piece of an immense puzzle that will eventually get you hired. This may take months, it may take years depending on your life situation. Be patient. If you put in the work and effectively learn how to build things, a potential employer is gonna notice. Grit is also a huge part. There’s gonna be times along this journey where you feel like giving up. There’s gonna be some problems you encounter that’ll be real frustrating as fuck. Don’t get discouraged. The stronger you are and the more tolerant you become of things extremely difficult problems the more you’re conditioning your ability to work in challenging settings on challenging problems. Anyways, I doubt any of you read the whole thing, but if you made it this far just know that there is hope, even if that hope is ever fleeting. Grab the bull by the motherfucking horns! You can do this shit!

[@Jinja-san]

Nice one

[@joaodasilva101]

Thanks dude.

[@lukashenrique4295]

Thanks!

[@mickylogic]

I messed up leaving my job, to move to Canada with no job, came home and now I am struggling to get a role again in Ireland with 2.5 years of experience and a masters. Most of these same companies with job offers/interviews early 2022 won't even give me an interview with a referral. Most jobs you look now want such specific skills.

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

I am in pretty much the same position

[@mickylogic]

@@FirstLast-gk6lg We just have to keep pushing and hope for better days to come!

[@GackFinder]

Out of interest, what are some of the specific skills they are looking for?

[@mickylogic]

@@GackFinder Often it seems to be specific years experience with a language, frameworks and more specific to their products. Almost like they only want people that already have used their specific tech stack, development environment and the same type of repos/products.

[@DBKarel]

Coding bootcamps should not be taken into consideration by any rational employer. I hope this economy ruins the bootcamp business model because it’s always been a scam.

[@fishturtle2144]

idk how about lying on your resume? market is broken at the moment, also companies almost always lie in job description

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

But once you get to the 6 round interview you will immediately be found out to be fraud. Believe me I would lie a lot more if I could but these interview esp mid-senior level interviews are absolutely ridiculous

[@LutherDePapier]

True.

[@ReneSaarsoo]

I find the job market today to be utterly hopeless. It used to be that I just picked one company, applied to it, did a couple of interviews and was hired. But nowadays there are oh-so-many interviews and coding challenges and what not to go through. And after jumping through all the hoops I still don't get an offer because e.g. I didn't look excited enough about the job. Well of course I'm not excited after a month of interviewing. I can't imagine how bad it must be for Junior developers.

[@jst8922]

Junior job market today is like dating market, if you are not top 10%, you get nothing.

[@monopolisticfox]

As someone who was recently looking for a job, I've learned a LOT of tech jobs aren't hiring anyone who are new in the field. Don't know if it was always like this, but 95% of the jobs required at least 3-5 years+ of experience. As someone who was getting their foot in the door, it really limited the job market for me. Ended up getting a decent job, but I consider it luck instead of skill.

[@piroman85]

Dev of almost 2 decades here: Nobody wants juniors because the OG programmers were getting into it out of passion. Then word got around it's profitable. People who get into it for the money rarely get far. There's just a certain mindset a programmer needs to really be good at it, and it's also a challenging job meaning you need larger satisfaction than just making money to avoid serious burnout. As a result the junior brackets are overcrowded with incompetent money chasers and actual young talent gets drowned out and hard to fish out. On top of that college tries to teach an unreal "scientific" perspective on programming which fails bad in real world which is why all the worst programmers I've ever met were all college grads.

[@KristianTBV]

This is just the same regurgitated advice and I don’t mean this as a dig at all because you’re trying to help. But I feel this is just a mix of an over saturated market, AI, and Economical issues. Unfortunately we can’t all “Build projects” are way into a senior dev position. The reality is someone or some company is going to just have to take a chance on you for the most part. So definitely keep trying but what I want everyone to know is that Coding MAY NOT BE FOR YOU. Ask yourselves do you LOVE CODING?? Do you spend your free time naturally doing this stuff?? I got my computer science degree saw the market and switched to UI/UX and I genuinely enjoy design so much more. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy coding to a degree but only when I’m trying to bring something to life myself.

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

That really spoke to me, how did you switch to UI/UX? cause I am going into my 4th year and i simply know that I will never be a 10x engineer, I simply don't love or understand coding well enough. But i do love esp UX, any advice for making a hard switch?

[@Anton_Sh.]

You got a computer science degree and switched to UI/UX?? Wow!

[@Anton_Sh.]

​@@FirstLast-gk6lg coding won't at least degrade your cognitive performance / problem solving. Just an opinion.

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

@@Anton_Sh. agreed I know it's good and I do enjoy it. But it's sort of like Broccoli, I enjoy it on my own terms at my own scale. But being an engineer feels like being forced to eat 10x more Broccoli than I want even when I'm not hungry and how long until I can't stand the sight of Broccoli?

[@KristianTBV]

@@FirstLast-gk6lg For sure man, it's actually pretty simple. I searched around online about what UI'UX Developers actually do and then I started looking for online tutorials then eventually move into getting my certification. And I got the Google UX course certification which took around 6 months after I graduated, started interviewing and building a portfolio. I also use my CS degree as leverage a lot which helps against a lot of the competition. It's been great and the salary is nice. I'm actually able to work mostly stress free and I still code a little for my personal website/brand but it's on my terms ofc with no stress.

[@OatmealTheCrazy]

I've been pointing this out to every single person going around indiscriminately yelling "learn to code" at every single person talking about issues with economy/pay.

[@chrisalexthomas]

But if seniors don't hire juniors anymore, then how is any of the work going to get done??? 😈 I'm not gonna do it! That's why I hire juniors to do it for me!

[@justafreak15able]

Don't you get it? You're the junior developer now.

[@chrisalexthomas]

@@justafreak15able :P :P :P

[@chrisalexthomas]

look at my eyes... this is my team now :D haha

[@l2xsniper1]

They technically can still hire juniors just at a much lower rate basically. They could still potentially get a new employee who fits in and all the other perks other than just not having that senior experience for less pay until they do become senior skilled.

[@intellectualuser2244]

Long story short: world has turned into Dark Souls game and you either work like a machine or got failed to bankrupt living under the bridge with no money at all...

[@samgould8567]

Unpopular opinion: companies used to see hiring junior devs as a long-term investment, but most devs don’t stick around at companies for more than a few years anymore, so there is less incentive to hire someone less capable who still has a relatively high salary expectation.

[@joelwillis2043]

The reason why they didn't stick around is because companies have decided its cost effective to not offer reasonable raises. Those that job hopped were rewarded with higher pay. The job hopping mentality is relatively new and has become more mainstream. The marketplace will fix itself eventually.

[@danielwasserlauf4516]

Management doesn't even stick around that long. This isn't a great take, because it assume an organization is static entity. Companies change, management turns over, people leave.

[@lukasmolcic5143]

we can solve this with better contracts, the companies need to figure out what is the cost to train a junior to be productive and what is the time frame in which such a learned junior would pay out the investment that was made in him, then just have them sign a contract which would secure the companies interests. There are nuances to work out of course, you won't want to keep every junior that you bring, so you should probably drop the ones that you don't want as soon as possible, and transfer their trial cost to the ones that do stay or just eat the cost as an investment, whatever, but something in that direction, just not letting new people in to the industry is not a solution

[@dp-by1wg]

You're absolutely right. I'm a senior dev and all of the juniors we've hired these last few years end up not being very good, yet they have VERY high expectations in terms of salary. I prefer getting 1 senior dev than 3 junior devs.

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

There is no inventive to stay when they want to pay a Junior less than they would make waiting tables at a mid-tier restaurant. Then when the Junior has proven themselves are a year or two the companies refuses to give them a 200% raise so they are forced to leave.

[@jeffrey5602]

I am a data scientist with 2 years of exp specialising in NLP. I have spent the past years to learn as much as I can about all other software technologies that help me ship end to end application to the cloud. In my team I work as a one man army. I own the whole pipeline. I no more write models that live inside my Jupyter notebooks but maintain my own python packages, write APIs, CI/CD pipelines, Docker containers. Right now I am studying towards the Kubernetes developer cert to ship a whole cluster setup because I am also building a full fledged react app right now that we needed to build. I spent a few weeks in my free time learning react and then just told my team I'll build it by myself. Was kinda risky at first but looks not too bad right now. Next step is learning more about dbs. The goal was always to know enough after a few years to start my own company some day, even if I do not do it I pretty sure this whole journey lets me be quite employable. But you really have to enjoy learning new things and have an environment that lets you. If its not fun you will burn out easily

[@darkobakula5190]

Contrary to popular belief Senior-only job posts are not exclusive to IT industry. This is quite common to other industries such as trade jobs. This is why it's common for people in construction to possess different skills in carpentry, plumbing, electrical installations so they can maintain empolyability with good wages.

[@Distress.]

The boomers have done nothing to pass on their skills. I've heard this is a critical problem with agriculture and specialized engineering as well.

[@darkobakula5190]

@@Distress. All it takes is a bit of searching through job postings to find out requirements. Some jobs in my country oddly do not come with any job criteria but this is actually to get you to meet them. Which in itself might sound good on paper. But in reality, with every job there is a hidden cost / requirement.

[@retrorewind6042]

I was an electrician before i became a dev. Finding a job was nearly impossible

[@SL2797]

@@retrorewind6042 But I thought there was a shortage of blue collar jobs??

[@salvadorgarza461]

If I was in college seeing this video I would just study something else. The field is obviously oversaturated. Study accounting, nursing, or another type of engineering.

[@heralds3164]

You guys are all saying this as if we are pursuing a degree in Communications or something, that Computer Science isn’t one of the hardest degrees out there in university. Idk man I’m just really frustrated. I hear this advice all the time online and people say it as if I didn’t spend 4-5 hours a day for two weeks straight with no breaks working on my capstone project for one of my programming classes. On top of it takes me about 15 hours to complete my data structures assignments with me working on it throughout a week and getting help from TAs and the professor. Are we doing the same degree? Or am I just too slow at learning and should pick a different major.

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

This job HEAVILY awards people who have a high level of reading comprehension and retain information easily. The type of people who can read a complex algorithm problem once and perfectly understand what it is asking. The kind of people who can skim documentation and retain all these little methods and techniques indefinitely. I am not this type of person so i understand how you feel, I am just starting my 4th year and i am already burnt out, it has been a 100% maximum effort the entire last 3 years and only to be a mediocre dev

[@GackFinder]

Yes, pick a different major. I don't mean to offend. You may actually want to consider it. When I was in CS, there was a very broad spectrum of people, from those who struggled day and night, to those who breezed through. I was in the latter category because I've always had a natural inclination for this stuff. Meaning, most of the assignments and tasks felt natural to me, and there was no real difference between the work my brain had to do while performing these assignments as opposed to the work my brain did on my free time. I never really studied before the tests, just looked over the material briefly the night before and boom, passing grade. On the other hand, we had plenty of those who had to study _constantly_ to even get a passing grade _on the second and sometimes even third try_. I saw them constantly studying in the hallways. Reading the course literature over and over, taking copious amounts of notes. The people in this second category, that struggled so hard... almost none of them are working in IT today. So if you have to sink that many hours into your CS assignments, I'm just saying, it may not be for you. You have to have a natural inclination towards this stuff, and your brain need to already be wired for this type of work.

[@drchickensalad]

CS is child's play compared to most STEM degrees. Insane how low expectations and work ethic is rn

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

@drchickensalad that's not true and an ignorant take. None of those other STEM paths have evolving and growing information like CS does. Chemistry students only have to learn the periodic table once, math students will always get the same answers to their equations, and medical students again are almost entirely learning settled information. The CS student is learning something that will be an entirely l different landscape between their freshman year and senior year of college.

[@JETurp]

US can easily be explained by university recruitment cycles. Most entry-level positions won’t be approved in their budget until late January, which means jobs won’t be posted until mid-February.

[@jl_117]

Some senior positions are misleading. It just means ideally senior and they are open to more junior candidates too. However, you will likely need a recruiter or referral to be considered.

[@reuven2010]

yeah you can still try, emphasize that you are willing to learn, accept lower salary maybe.

[@matthewcaldwell8100]

@@reuven2010 Lower than the salary for a junior developer they're not hiring for? You don't see how that exacerbates the problem? Really?

[@awesomedavid2012]

​@@matthewcaldwell8100but they ARE in a lot of cases hiring for a junior position. Many companies will simply put up one job listing as a senior position but are willing to choose 1 senior dev or a handful of junior devs. They ARE actively hiring for juniors, it's just simpler and cheaper to maintain one job listing. It also pushes away the people who think they could never be capable of the demands of the position.

[@viktorskarlatov8227]

A company did a bait & switch on me recently. I applied for a senior mobile frontend dev - very specific. They did 3 rounds of interviews and on the last one they interviewed me for general architecture and systems design. Of course they expected me to be competent as an architect but to be paid as a frontend dev.

[@jade0136]

I had a new grad swe job lined up, then had my offer rescinded 14 days before I was suppose to start

[@ray84851]

3:42 Can't agree more. I was hired recently for my first Frontend developer job and was picked by the company out of (literally) thousands of candidates only because I have a solid grasp for Linux and Node-backend.

[@ramstab]

its literally the other way around in my country

[@stillmattwest]

What's happening is that budgets are tight but the demand for software hasn't lessened. The layoffs and budget cuts are driven by a desire for greater profits, not a reduction in demand. The dam will break and companies will start hiring again but for now companies want to maximize the budget they do have, which means hiring experienced developers. It's a bit short sighted. Junior developers are a good investment for companies. You get them on a "rookie contract" and it only takes them so long to onboard. In my humble opinion, every team should have a junior developer on it at all times.

[@chrysp2709]

As someone who has worked in the games industry form 20+ years I have interviewed many juniors and out of 10 applicants usually only 1 is actually hireable. What we are looking for is self driven and talented programmers who are highly passionate about what they want to do - this shows exclusively through the "have you got a passion project you are working on" question, if the answer is no - that is almost an automatic rejection. Most applicants just come with very little hard skills such as debugging and critical reasoning. The amount of people who think they can do game dev from watching some unreal/unity game tutorial on youtube is staggering. If I am looking to hire a junior dev then I am not looking for someone who already knows everything but rather I am looking for someone who actually can be molded into a highly skilled asset for the company over time. My expectation is that that person has the drive to learn and absorb all the necessary information and go beyond in their spare time. Good luck to all you juniors/job seekers out there in 2024!

[@wotizit]

Thanks Chris mate

[@karlosdaniel6537]

Unfortunately that is not true to other hirers, usually they require 1 or 2 years of experience in specific languages, cloud platforms and frameworks for junior developers upfront.

[@Elijah_Lopez]

As someone who is actually going through this, you have to find bootstrapped startups willing to pay $ or equity. If equity, you need to think like a VC and put in bare minimum hours a week. Basically, maximize jobs. If people working physically can do 3 jobs at a time, so can you. It's unfair, but that's exactly what we have to do. You also need to consider other fields and think macro-economically. Like go into a different field or even politics. Think about higher education not in CS via scholarships. If you want to do higher education in CS, you need to aim for Phd not just masters. Maybe think about crowd funding a new idea? Recessions for people like us = opportunity to rethink if we are living in the right city, country and whether we should move and start businesses.

[@PR1V1LE6ED]

The thing is, all of those junior devs turned into senior devs. Now, there's no shortage of senior devs. And I'm sure senior dev salaries are taking a hit too. The bar is just simply higher, and nothing will change until senior devs start retiring in 30 years.

[@vectoralphaSec]

When those senior devs retire and there are no more senior devs because all the junior devs were ignored and not given a chance to gain experience it will be fun to see the companies collapse because they have no more employees. Lol the whole purpose of junior devs is to hire them cheap $50k to $65k and train/ mold them to be the senior dev the company wants them to be. Eventually with time and experience the junior becomes senior and gains senior salary typically $100k+

[@SomeUserNameBlahBlah]

Not everyone becomes a senior dev. Senior is a rank and not years in the field, same for principle.

[@david-ek2bo]

@@vectoralphaSec You are clearly butthurt about not being able to get a job. There was never shortage of juniors who just want to get spoon fed while getting paid 50k/year, you ain't special. If you need some company to build you up and you can't make it without them, then you are literally at bottom of the barrel as developer. And don't worry, those companies won't collapse, that's just your wishful thinking. There are plenty of young guys getting hired, they just don't need to label themselves as "juniors" because they've been building stuff on their own for couple of years prior.

[@vectoralphaSec]

@david-ek2bo nope. Just stating the fact about how it is and should work. Stop projecting your insecurities.

[@glaive120]

@@vectoralphaSec hes right, theres just an oversaturation of junior devs right now after covid. If anyone makes a junior dev job listing it probably gets 100+ applicants and immediately gets trimmed down to people with 4 year degrees or multiple years of experience. Even without getting hired plenty of people will still get experience from online classes, bootcamps, and self study. Thats what happens when everyone jumps on the bandwagon for a job, you get a lot of competition.

[@hinkhall5291]

Given that you gotta train and coach most junior developers for a couple of years until a you get something good out of them, it makes more sense for a company to get one senior instead of 2-3 juniors. You still get more productivity. Also, 1 senior salary could be cheaper than 2-3 junior salaries. And if you wanna save even more money you can get a cheap and super talented senior developer abroad from the Ukraine, Brazil, Mexico, etc. It is a crappy situation.

[@pearce01-37]

Halfway through my sophomore year of college in computer science and this keeps me up at night :(

[@NathanSmutz]

Do internships over the Summer if you can. That can turn into a job offer if you do well.

[@greedyboi011]

Been made redundant from two junior jobs within 18months. Been unemployed for 6 months this year (well from developer jobs). 2023 sucked, but we must use it as fuel to become better.

[@JoshIbbotson-]

Excellent video, I just got my first role as a full stack developer in the UK, 5 months ago (made a video about my experience). My advice would be look for full stack or end-to-end developer positions in small towns working in office, thats a great way to get in. Manufacturing companies are screaming out for developers so definitely look for the companies you least expect. You don't have to start at a tech profit centre!

[@JoshIbbotson-]

Oh btw i'm self taught for anyone wondering, though I have MSc in Biomedical Sciences (no programming)

[@powderypastor1242]

Bingo. I'm also looking for entry jobs at smaller companies in smaller cities, and am finding a lot of offers I'll be going for. Amazing what you can find once you steer away from all the bullshit in Big Tech and the wannabe startups that shadow them.

[@JoshIbbotson-]

@@powderypastor1242 100% absolute key to getting in, in my honest opinion. So many people I met early on who have sneered at this advice but if you want it badly enough this is what it takes. I have learnt an insane amount since starting my current position!

[@BulletPhase]

Got my first role as an apprentice 3 months ago in a small town outside the city I grew up in

[@lukashenrique4295]

Lovely tips! Gonna try lf jobs at these places, there are tons of nearby cities that are like 1h ride from where I live so it'd be fine. Do you recommend internships over Junior positions? Is the market different for people who are still going through college?

[@billyremake8090]

In germany it is really easy to find a job as a junior. No idea what u did

[@im7254]

Welcome to how all other job markets work

[@username7763]

I had the task of hiring for a team where, 2 contractors were cut, 1 engineer was moved to a different department, and 2 engineers quit for a better job. This was in a span of several years but was a continual reduction. Eventually, we got approval to hire 1 person -- only one, and I should be happy for that. This was while the economy and company was doing good. This forced me to have to be very picky with who I hired. I was pressured to hire a more junior engineer but I rejected that. It is crazy to replace 5 people with 1, much less with 1 junior engineer. During the same conversation about how to keep our workforce low, I was asked about why we weren't getting more done and were always late. Yeah, no kidding. This kind of wishful thinking ends up producing counterproductive hiring practices. It hurts employees and companies alike.

[@ilyas8523]

Same boat here, with 6 months of internships experience, Bachelors, certifications, projects, and its now been 7 months since I graduated and no luck. This will hurt them in the long run. As managers want to retire, senior engineers will have to take up the management positions, and the company will want to move the juniors up for a senior position, but wait a minute, there are none because they decided to be greedy, following the AI buzzword hype for profits (although 8/10 the ai models don't apply for their business model). I graduated with Data Science degree, and ML internship. Seeing the AI hype going around, where fucking mechanical engineers want to hop on the waggon (and get the job bc they have 5+ years of experience apparently) is annoying. Alright that's my rant. Who's next

[@pepsi_kola]

You're delusional. It's simply because of market forces. Too many developers for not so much work. Simple as that.

[@ilyas8523]

@@pepsi_kola I understand the demand is lower, and the supply of devs is increasing. Whats your background? What solutions would you suggest? Will it get better? This doesn't take away the fact that the number of open entry-level jobs are close to none.

[@Luiz997488]

As a new dev, I was able to get my first job due to a very compassionate HR team and being able to border mid level proficiency in coding. Without that, I'd be browsing linkedin for the last 9 months still

[@bearandbeer4145]

nah bro, that's how you choose to swallow it - you're worth every penny they're paying you and more.

[@RateOfChange]

Don't get me wrong, buyt you're a good looking dude. You probably got lucky because the HR girls were "compassionate" when they saw your profile picture. Not trying to be a jerk, just being realistic. I've seen it happen a lot.

[@janisozolins8004]

@@RateOfChangedont blackpill a programmer dude :D

[@RandomNoob1124]

@@RateOfChangeWdf is this 😂

[@Luiz997488]

@@RateOfChange It was a dude lol

[@dannymaher7766]

Just got my junior developer position. Had to absolutely work my arse off developing a portfolio and spending every minute of my free time applying for jobs but I got there in the end

[@SoftwareDeveloperDiaries]

Congrats!

[@VladimirRurikovich]

any recommendation for intern role candidates?

[@oscarhagman8247]

one thing you didn't mentioned, which I think is very relevant is that hiring a junior developer is a huge risk to take. While there are for sure capable junior devs out there, but there is also A LOT of junior devs that doesn't have nearly enough technical knowledge to be useful, so they end up taking up a lot of time from the senior devs, basically becoming a very expensive burden

[@Bioniclema90]

That may be so, but what happens when there's no more senior devs? Either because they retired or got hired. None of the junior devs were given any professional experience, so none of them could meet the ridiculous expectations companies have of them. It's not sustainable whether they want to admit it or not.

[@OrdigTroll]

Theoretically that should be what interviews are for

[@tonybowen455]

So much conflicting advice on yt. Another person on yt said all jr's are basically the same after a point, and to work on people skills and networking. I haven't seen one person tell a story about a nightmare jr hire which makes me skeptical.

[@jablanguado7738]

I work with a nightmare jr hire.@@tonybowen455

[@LutherDePapier]

Which is what the hiring process is supposed to prevent.

[@cameronord7750]

Sometimes I feel like all this time I spent learning, literally no-lifing it was a waste of time. Now I'm still stuck working a minimum wage night shift job, with added debt. The problem with this, is that I genuinely enjoy programming. I already don't need (or want) socialization by default, and there are times when I literally do nothing but code whenever I have the chance. Honestly, at this point, I believe I've already gone beyond what is expected of a Junior. I'm still nowhere near what I would consider a "good" programmer, but I'm not stopping. I'll be fair here: when I was applying to jobs I was a lesser dev than I was now, so maybe I should try again. If Junior devs don't get hired, then the industry kinda eats the shit down the line, no?

[@foreverskeptical1]

Yepp just hoping for AI or war or chaos to take it course. We are at late stage capitalism where its not about providing value but extracting value. GenZ and Millennials got screwed by the boomers generation. But i hope this is a waking up call for all us to collectively wake up and say enough is enough, life is too short to play the games capitalism demands. Its time to break the cycle, and break the cycle, though one has to be willing to pay the price to do that

[@rentefald]

I can ask you a simple question to know your skill level. Q1: You need to do integrations between 2 systems, system A has an API, system B has a DB. How would you proceed?

[@dqme5865]

"I'm still nowhere near what I would consider a "good" programmer, but I'm not stopping." - if this is your attitude, you have nothing to worry about, keep trying.

[@Sonsequence]

The reason is the stack for web has kind of stopped changing. Fast change is the junior's friend, giving a chance to leapfrog the set-in-their-ways senior. In 2016 the most modern way to develop software with a UI was a node server compiling a react app, version controlled by git with a git-flow branching strategy managed through pull requests to a github project, using CICD defined by yaml files in the repo manipulating docker containers. This is now the dominant approach. Some movement in apps but react is big their too. The juniors who came up at that time are seniors now and the stack hasn't much changed except to have professionalised further.

[@tsunghan_yu]

interesting perspective

[@shawky.khalil]

An extra tip: Read other people's code, specifically, senior developers, that way, you'll see how seniors think and solve problems and also how they structure and organize their code. P. S: I'm a junior developer too who is currently struggling to find a job 😢

[@SoftwareDeveloperDiaries]

That's actually a great tip! Good luck, you'll definitely find something you love :)

[@shawky.khalil]

@@SoftwareDeveloperDiaries Thank you, I really hope so 🥰

[@JEsterCW]

I have seen many bad written seniors code and usually the reason what does it happens is that the quality of code doesnt always mean its the best for the business aspect. Don't take me wrong, simplicity is the key and if its maintable thats the point. Difficult business = difficult business code no matter what. The most important is to write a code that will be incredibly easy to be understood by different developer who is new to the project thats also why architecture is important.

[@shawky.khalil]

@@JEsterCW I guess you're right yeah, we can't take their code for granted but at least I can see how they're thinking and how different problems are solved to save me some time.

[@l2xsniper1]

Just get a role in tech anywhere maybe just to build the resume up such as an service desk analyst?

[@Youvko]

If you struggling to find a job as junior, become an end-to-end junior. You will become an all rounded spoiling machine. Instead of breaking just backend you will be able to break the whole infrastructure 🙌 I think I have opposite opinion on that.

[@ghdshds1899]

Becoming a senior engineer is about two things mainly: - Upselling yourself - Thinking critically about problems. You have to be the one who can spot issues coming from a mile away when nobody else can. You need to be the one that knows the knockon effects of decisions, on the technical level and on the business level. Being a senior engineer is less about coding and more about being able to figure things out and build them in a responsible and intentful way. You are doing yourself a disservice if you think you need to do hours of end of studying and personal projects to go up the ladder. What you need to do is emulate the way your seniors and principals are thinking.

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

I am 4 years in, over qualified for Junior roles but failing interviews for senior roles. Idk about you but there seem to be EXTREME technical barriers to getting a senior role. Failed 3 senior interviews in the last 2 months and all 3 were shockingly difficult, I felt like I was literally years of experience away from being able to pass those interviews.

[@anonfourtyfive]

@@FirstLast-gk6lg the terms are obviously too broadly used. it should be restructured. but it would mean different post and different position which would required more staff, which mean more cost efficiency, which mean bad for profit. I hate this "Money" world.

[@froggin-zp4nr]

@@FirstLast-gk6lg One persons senior is another persons architect. The responsibilities of a senior vary greatly from place to place. Don't rush yourself to have that senior title it's not a race. Give yourself the time to have a good 7 years experience to comfortably apply for senior roles. By all means be ambitious but don't be hard on yourself if you wonder why the interviews seem so hard. It's a similar situation to what we experience as juniors, needing more knowledge and experience than the role requires.

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

@froggin-zp4nr I totally agree with what you have said. Sadly I am only getting call backs and interviews for senior positions. Not one mid-level role has replied to me

[@Mastikator]

Being a senior software developer is not really about writing code, it's about delivering value to a business. Which means you have to learn and understand their business and figure out what they can improve with digitization. And importantly: you have to make sure they know that you delivered that value.

[@RateOfChange]

Been studying like a freak for 2 years now, 0 jobs. Even enrolled in a well known local college. I can smell the burnout coming.

[@SoftwareDeveloperDiaries]

Don’t give up mate. Are there any projects you’ve been working on? How many companies have you applied to? What do you think could be improved?

[@jwoods9659]

Meaning STOP LOOKING FOR A FREAKING JOB AND START A BUSINESS that solves a problem. Companies want to hire those people

[@rafaeljoseitaliano6075]

Still, there's a way out. If you truly believe you are skilled enough to work in a, say, a ticketing company just make your own competing app. show these mfers they should've hired you in first placr and make them buy your startup when it starts becoming a pain in their a** for multiples. I know there are risks and having to know a little about business and not just tech but hey, thats the gamble the founder of the company who you're applying for took.

[@pavle5786]

Honestly, I don't understand why you wouldn't just find a position that is more beginer frendly like sys admin, hardware repair, L1 tech support, and doing software dev projects on the side, as a hobby. Having some experience that is related to tech is better than none. Like sorry, but earning 100k by age 25 is just ridiculous, social media got everyone fucked up, take your time.

[@GackFinder]

Yeah. That's basically what I did. Started as part time consultant as server tech and help desk during CS classes, which led to a lady at one of my clients asking "hey do you know programming because we're looking to hire". But to be fair, she wouldn't have asked me if I didn't have some people skills. I'm not an extrovert, but I know how to socialize (kinda required when you're a consultant).

[@i.eduard4098]

I think those companies should make their own unis, see if they can land 5 years of experience juniors.

[@faucillon]

Logic: when you indicate ''junior' you only get candidates who barely have any education. The market is not broken. The respect of the market is broken. If recruiters respect the baseline request; they will see vacancies that actually are open for juniors.

[@javastream5015]

Even 20 years of experience do NOT help if the companies are strict in their requirements!

[@coolkidex]

I landed an internship with a great small company recently. When you mentioned selling yourself as an end-to-end developer, i started seeing a lot of correlations between that and a lot of the work that they have me doing on internship currently. You're absolutely right. Honing in on being able to bring a full product or app to development yourself in a reasonable time frame is an EXTREMELY valuable skill to have. Good stuff bro.