A year ago the demand for devs was so high, that even if the market heavily favored senior devs, you saw companies having to make concessions. But with all the recent layoffs and hiring freezes, that's starting to change.
We're most likely heading to a recession, and in that scenario hiring would slow down considerably but not probably not completely stop. What would the companies that are still hiring prefer, junior or senior devs? On the one hand senior devs means they can do more with fewer employees and they don't have to train them, but junior devs are also less expensive.
Another way to phrase this is: if you knew of someone who was trying to learn to code, and better job opportunities was one of their main motivators, would you suggest that they reconsider based on where the market is headed?
Getting that first dev job is hard, and it's probably harder than it used to be, but all that difficulty goes away after you land your first gig. Software is eating the world, and the jobs to produce it aren't going anywhere. While I worked toward my first job, I built websites for clients, spoke at meetups, threw up some projects of my own. By the time I got my first job, I wasn't really a junior anymore.
> What would the companies that are still hiring prefer, junior or senior devs?
It's not so cut and dry. Juniors are useless without strong seniors to guide them, but a team of all senior+ devs doesn't necessarily translate to faster or better code. My last company didn't have any junior devs at all.
Becoming a strong developer takes a long time, but the payoff is absolutely worth it. I was in food service for years, basically a disposable cog, fired from more jobs than most people have even applied for. Now I make money I could never have imagined when I was waiting tables, and I have the security of not being instantly replaceable. I would recommend this career change to anybody, even if it does take a couple of years (which it doesn't have to).
The value add from Senior Developers… makes them less expensive than Junior Developers. There’s also time to market and quality.
Junior Developers are expensive and costly… in terms of management and training. And after all of that… they can end up working for competitors.
For example 90% of the cost of development is maintenance costs… faulty/buggy software in production.
- Potential: How fast has this person picked up since they were hired? - Intelligence: Related, but natural smarts is still a plus. - Personality: How much are you a fit for the team? - Reliability: Whether a manager know they can give work to you and it will get done. - Work Ethic: Available when they should be and make the most of their time. - Communication: Whether a person can present complex concepts in a coherent manner.
Essentially, you want to make yourself so good at the things you can do that whoever is making the decision has a really hard time letting you go.