Why is the market so tough for junior engineers right now? 😭

Back in 2016, I was working at Checkout.com and was one of the first developers working in their London office. Even back then the company had ambitious goals and as a result, I spent a lot of my time hiring new developers.

For any new developer, it can take 3–6 months to get them up to speed and during that time they will need help from the existing team. Given we already had a very small team with lots of work we couldn’t afford to spend a lot of time hand-holding new developers. As a result, we exclusively hired senior developers and especially those with existing payment experience.

In London especially, there are quite a few companies working with .NET and they all have a similar tech stack (it seems C# is still very popular in the UK). As a result, there was no shortage of senior candidates to interview. Generally, a good senior developer is at least twice more productive (if not more) than a junior developer while often getting paid less than double the junior salary. It wasn’t until the company got a lot larger (and more profitable) that we started branching out and hiring junior developers.

Often companies will see junior developers as an investment. If a junior developer shows good potential and is a fast learner, their output can be comparable to that of an OK senior developer. This is great for companies, as for the first few years at least, that developer isn’t going to be earning as much as the senior developers.

So why does this matter now?

A lot of tech companies have seen massive layoffs this year and it doesn’t appear to be over yet. It has definitely slowed down but combined with hiring freezes it is getting harder to get a job in tech.

Lots of engineering teams will be running as skeleton crews, overworked and staffed just enough to keep the lights on. Even though many teams have lost team members to the layoffs, the amount of work that is expected from them hasn’t decreased.

With companies being a lot more selective with their hires, they expect any team member that joins to “hit the ground running” and that is just not something most junior developers are very good at. If you have the budget to hire a developer it makes more sense to spend that on an experienced developer than an inexperienced one.

It is not all doom and gloom though. Hiring in tech does seem to be increasing especially outside of Big Tech. I can see from my LinkedIn that many of those laid off at the beginning of the year have managed to find jobs.

My advice for those struggling is to put yourself out there. Share your knowledge on LinkedIn and on developer platforms so employers can see what you know. Put together a project to show off your skills and finally try applying for the lesser-known large companies that will likely have less competition for roles. Once you have some experience under your belt it is a lot easier to find new positions.

If you are a junior developer, let us know in the comments what your experience has been trying to get a job in the current market.

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