[rickmb]

Bull.

Companies have been hiring tons of inexperienced devs throughout the late '90s and early '00s, and they have been hurt badly by it. Incoherent teams full of junior devs that lacked practical skills and didn't know how to work in a team nearly killed many software based companies.

A CS degree teaches barely any professional skills, it's all on the job training, so training a junior is extremely costly.

So nowadays, smart companies build their team around seniors, and only then start hiring juniors one at a time. Which means 3 to 4 seniors for every junior dev.

It's not about "plugging the hole", it's about making sure the ship doesn't start leaking so badly it sinks.

[mgkimsal]

"Companies have been hiring tons of inexperienced devs throughout the late '90s and early '00s, and they have been hurt badly by it."

Hiring "junior devs" and "hiring inexperienced devs" can be a world apart.

Hiring someone for position X who turns out to be inexperienced is not the same as explicitly hiring a junior developer with the intent of training them up.

I've seen a lot of the former, but not much of the latter. The two ideas get conflated quite often, but in reality are different and the latter takes a bigger commitment of resources.

"So nowadays, smart companies build their team around seniors, and only then start hiring juniors one at a time."

5-10 years from now, the conventional wisdom will probably be different. Sr devs might be more willing to leave, and if there are fewer of them, a larger percentage of your company knowledge, culture and IP resources go with them.

[karmajunkie]

I agree with you in principle but your ratio is way off. Once you get out of the startup phase, a senior team lead plus one senior to two juniors is plenty. Training them isn't any more costly than hiring a senior, and they have the benefit of, you know, being available to hire.

[Retric]

I have seen several teams with this idea but they start calling someone senior after 4-5 years...

The following team is vary senior heavy and would avoid the junior dev team syndrome without costing an arm an arm and a leg and is still reasonably stable over the long term as long as turnover is low.

1 person with 0-2 years exp, 1 person with 2-5, 1 with 5-7, 3 with 7+ and 1 with 15+.

To, keep priming the pump just look for one new grad every 2 years and keep a lookout for the occasional great senior dev out there to cover for attrition.