Good to SEO: When It Makes Sense For Businesses To Hire Junior Software Developers

Today, many companies try to stay away from hiring junior software developers and only focus on mid-level and senior resources. There’s a misconception that junior programmers will break the project and deliver little to no value. Here, I will try to dispel this popular myth, but first, let’s have a closer look at where this idea has stemmed from. There are reasons businesses are reluctant to hire junior full stack developers, so let’s go through them briefly.

The mentorship problem

Juniors have to be coached for at least several months before they start delivering quality code, and one of the senior developers has to become a mentor. This means he will be spending less time on his tasks, which will influence the overall team progress. Besides, mentorship is not for everyone. Being an experienced developer doesn’t always come along with coaching and mentoring talents.

The experience problem

A code written by rookies doesn’t stand the competition against the code written by middle or senior developers. Businesses are seriously concerned that having junior devs working on an app will result in a poor app quality on a core level.

The productivity problem

Not only do experienced developers deliver better code, but they also do it much faster. Usually, 4–5 times faster than the junior devs. Surely, their salaries and compensation packages are also 3–4 times bigger, but many companies are ready to meet the expenses.

Overall mistrust and bias

This is rarely spoken of, but in general, people tend to associate price with quality. Hiring junior full stack developers is much cheaper, which automatically translates into a perceived lack of expertise, even when it comes to truly talented and promising juniors.

This spells bad news for aspiring developers: they somehow need to avoid being juniors to get into a profession. Irony aside, this also means companies may be missing a lot of great talent, narrowing down their search pools to middle and senior level candidates, most of whom happen to be already employed and will need solid reasons to leave their current jobs.

This brings us to the main reason why hiring junior programmers may be more beneficial, apart from purely financial speculations: they are more available than more experienced devs. Fresh from college, they are highly motivated job seekers and also highly engaged employees, flexible and willing to learn.

When to hire junior dev talent for your software project

There’s an international HR expertise on the subject: in Germany, hiring very young interns is a general practice, based on a belief that investing in a company’s human capital pays off in the long run. Allowing people to grow within your company also makes for higher employee loyalty, engagement and, subsequently, retention rate.

Ben Gamble, CTO at Quincus, generally agrees: “They (junior developers) free up your time for the hard stuff. A lot of tasks require time more than skill. Testing, research and data entry all require hands, minimal brain and a shocking amount of time”.

Whether you are running an established company or a startup is also important.

“An ideal ratio of experienced to junior employees is 3:1, but you may just as well figure out your own proportion.”

Here’s a brief synopsis on the benefits of hiring juniors for startups and SMBs:

Payment and compensation benefits

As a rule, junior developers don’t have many family and community obligations, and will easier accept more company equity and less monetary remunerations.

Flexibility and willingness to experiment

As said above, junior talents don’t have much to unlearn, think out of the box and can come up with fresher ideas.

Recruitment source and competitive analysis

Juniors tend to network more, attend developer meetups, circulate and mingle. They can easily introduce you to new talent, update you on what’s going on on the market and what your competitors are up to.

Employee satisfaction

In general, juniors are more willing to take risks and more tolerant of the uncertainty of a startup environment.