[JustExAWS]

ChatGPT is better than any junior developer I’ve ever worked with. Junior devs have always been a net negative for the first year or so.

From a person who is responsible for delivering projects, I’ve never thought “it sure would be nice if I had a few junior devs”. Why when I can poach an underpaid mid level developer for 20% more?

[throwway120385]

I've never had a junior dev be a "net negative." Maybe you're just not supervising or mentoring them at all? The first thing I tell all new hires under me is that their job is to solve more problems than they create, and so far it's worked out.

[antonymoose]

I’ve had interns be a net negative, I’ve had Juniors be a net negative, I’ve had Seniors be a net negative and even managers!

Turns out some people suck, but most of them don’t suck.

[JustExAWS]

But by definition, junior developers with no experience are going to need more handholding and tale time away from experience developers.

[Capricorn2481]

> junior developers with no experience are going to need more handholding

Unlike AI, which gives me fake methods, broken code, and wrong advice with full confidence.

[JustExAWS]

I just “wrote” 2000 lines of code for a project between Node for the AWS CDK and Python using the AWS SDK (Boto3). Between both, ChatGPT needed to “know” the correct API for 12 services, SQL and HTML (for a static report). The only thing it got wrong with a one shot approach was a specific Bedrock message payload for a specific LLM model. That was even just a matter of saying “verify the payload on the web using the official docs”.

Yes it was just as well structured as I - someone who has been coding as a hobby or professionally for four decades - would have done.

[Capricorn2481]

That's great for you. I ask Sonnet 4 to make a migration and a form in Laravel Filament, and it regularly shits itself. I'm curious what those 12 services were, they must've had unchanging, well documented APIs.

[skydhash]

> I just “wrote” 2000 lines of code for a project between Node...

I think I wrote -200 lines of code on my last PR. I may be doing something bad for that number to be negative.

[antonymoose]

Truly depends on the organization and systems. I’m at a small firm with too few Senior staff, lots of fire-fighting going on among us, etc. We have loads of low-hanging fruit for our Juniors so we tend to have very quick results after an initial onboarding.

[devmor]

I've never worked with a junior developer that was incapable of learning or following instructions unless I formatted them in a specific way.

[broast]

I definitely have

[AstroBen]

That's due to the person, not their development experience level

[surajrmal]

The most impressive folks Ive worked with are almost always straight out of school. It's before they've developed confidence about their skills and realized they can be more successful by starting their own business. People who get promoted three times in just 5 years sort of good.

[JustExAWS]

Did their project manager and/or team lead think when they were hired “they are really going to be a great asset to my team and are going to help me complete my sprint/quarterly goals”?

When I ask for additional headcount, I’m looking at the next quarter since that’s what my manager is judging me based on.

[N_Lens]

I think you’re just telling on what kind of mentor you are with your comment.

[JustExAWS]

I’m a great mentor when given the time. Two former interns for whom I was their official mentor during my time at AWS got return offers and are thriving two years after I left. I threw one in front of a customer to lead the project within three months after they came back after graduating. They were able to come through technically and had the soft skills. I told them my training approach is to “throw them at the bus. But never under the bus.”

I’m also a great teacher. That’s my $DayJob and has been for the past decade first bringing in new to the company processes and technologies, leading initiatives, teaching other developers, working with sales, CxOs (smaller companies), directors, explaining large “organizational transformation” proposals etc. working at startups and then doing the same in cloud consulting first working at AWS (ProServe full time role) and now working as a staff architect full time at a third party consulting company.

But when I have been responsible for delivery, I only hire people who have experience “dealing with ambiguity” and show that I can give them a decently complicated problem and they can take the ball and run with it and make decent decisions and do research. I don’t even do coding interviews - when I interview it’s strictly behavioral and talking through their past projects, decision making processes, how they overcame challenges etc.

In terms of AWS LPs, it’s “Taking Ownership” (yeah quoting Amazon LPs made me throw up a little).

[N_Lens]

Relax buddy, it’s not a job interview. You’re just in the comment section of a HN post.

[JustExAWS]

Trust me I am not looking for a job, if I were, I just talk about “AI for per care” and get funded by YC…

[zelag]

Sure thing buddy.

[Disposal8433]

What happens when you retire and there are no juniors to replace you?

[JustExAWS]

That sounds like an incentive issue.

My evaluations are based on quarterly goals and quarterly deliverables. No one at a corporation cares about anything above how it affects them.

Bringing junior developers up to speed just for them to jump ship within three years or less doesn’t benefit anyone at the corporate level. Sure they jump ship because of salary compression and inversion, where internet raises don’t correspond to market rates. Even first level managers don’t have a say so or budget to affect that.

This is true for even BigTech companies. A former intern I mentored who got a return offer a year before I left AWS just got promoted to an L5 and their comp package was 20% less than new hires coming in at an l5.

Everyone will be long gone from the company if not completely retired by the time that happens.

[devmor]

> Bringing junior developers up to speed just for them to jump ship within three years or less doesn’t benefit anyone at the corporate level.

What? Of course it does. If that's happening everywhere, that means other companies' juniors are also jumping ship to come work for you while yours jump ship to work elsewhere. The only companies that don't see a benefit from mentoring new talent are those with substandard compensation.

[JustExAWS]

That’s true, but why should I take on the work of being at the beginning of the pipeline instead of hiring a mid level developer. My incentives are to meet my quarterly goals and show “impact”.

To a first approximation, no company pays internal employees at market rates in an increasing comp environment after a couple of years especially during the first few years of an employee’s career where their marker rate rapidly increases once they get real world experience.

On the other hand, the startup I worked for pre-AWS with 60 people couldn’t, wouldn’t and shouldn’t have paid me the amount I made when I got hired at AWS.

[devmor]

> That’s true, but why should I take on the work of being at the beginning of the pipeline instead of hiring a mid level developer.

Nominally, for the same reason that you pay taxes for upkeep on the roads and power lines. Because everyone capable needs to contribute to the infrastructure or it will degrade and eventually fail.

> My incentives are to meet my quarterly goals and show “impact”.

To me, that speaks of mismanagement - a poorly run company that is a leech on the economy and workforce. In contrast, as a senior level engineer at a large technology company that has remarkably low turnover, one of my core duties is to help enhance the capabilities of other coworkers and that includes mentorship. This is because our leadership understands that it adds workforce retention value.

> To a first approximation, no company pays internal employees at market rates in an increasing comp environment after a couple of years especially during the first few years of an employee’s career where their marker rate rapidly increases once they get real world experience.

That's why I mentioned it being a cross-industry symbiotic relationship. Your company may not retain the juniors that you help train, but the mid level engineers you hire are the juniors that someone else helped train. If you risk not mentoring juniors, you encourage other companies to do the same and reduce the pool of qualified mid level engineers available to you in the future.

> On the other hand, the startup I worked for pre-AWS with 60 people couldn’t, wouldn’t and shouldn’t have paid me the amount I made when I got hired at AWS.

While unrelated to my point, I do have a different experience that you may find interesting in that the most exorbitant salary I have ever been paid was as a contractor for a 12-person startup, not at the organizations with development teams in the hundreds or thousands.

[JustExAWS]

> Nominally, for the same reason that you pay taxes for upkeep on the roads and power lines. Because everyone capable needs to contribute to the infrastructure or it will degrade and eventually fail.

On the government level, I agree. I’m far from a “taxation is theft” Libertarian.

But I also have an addiction to food and shelter. The only entity capable of that kind of collective action that is good for society is the government. My (and I’m generalizing myself as any rationale actor) goal is to do what is necessary to exchange labor for money by aligning my actions with the corporations incentives to continue to put money in my bank account and (formerly) vested RSUs in my brokerage account.

> To me, that speaks of mismanagement - a poorly run company that is a leech on the economy and workforce. In contrast, as a senior level engineer at a large technology company that has remarkably low turnover, one of my core duties is to help enhance the capabilities of other coworkers and that includes mentorship

The only large tech company I’ve worked for has a leadership principal “Hire and Develop the Best”. But for an IC, it’s mostly bullshit. That doesn’t show up on your promo doc when it’s time to show “impact” or how it relates to the team’s “OKR’s”.

From talking to people at Google, it’s the same. But of course Amazon can afford to have dead weight. When I have one shot at a new hire that is going to help me finish my quarterly goals as a team lead, I’m not going to hire a junior and put more work on myself.

I’m an IC, but in the org chart, I’m at the same level as a front line manager.

> While unrelated to my point, I do have a different experience that you may find interesting in that the most exorbitant salary I have ever been paid was as a contractor for a 12-person startup, not at the organizations with development teams in the hundreds or thousands.

As a billable consultant at AWS (and now outside of AWS) because of scale, I brought a lot more money into AWS than anything I could have done at the startup.

That’s why I said the startup “shouldn’t” have paid me the same close to 1 million over four years that AWS offered me in cash and RSUs. It would have been irresponsible and detrimental to the company. I couldn’t bring that much value to the startup.