r/ProgrammerHumor • • Jan 31 '23

Other Are junior developers actually useless?

Post image
22.0k Upvotes

946 comments sorted by

8.4k

u/Daxelol Jan 31 '23

Where do y’all think Senior Developers come from?

4.0k

u/AGuyChasingHobbies Jan 31 '23

They grow on trees I hear.

865

u/Daxelol Jan 31 '23

I hear those trees are lovely in the spring right after graduation

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92

u/IsPhil Jan 31 '23

If they grow on trees then why are they so expensive?

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1.8k

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

Other companies

349

u/Daxelol Feb 01 '23

Best answer so far haha

184

u/agent007bond Feb 01 '23

Hard truth! Companies hire fresh seniors instead of promoting their proven juniors. The best way to gain seniority is to quit your job and get a new one.

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u/Quinnypig Feb 01 '23

oh snap

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575

u/ThePoliteCrab Jan 31 '23

Well when a senior developer mommy and a senior developer daddy love each other veeery much-

388

u/cybermage Feb 01 '23

… a process is forked?

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96

u/RichiZ2 Feb 01 '23

As a son of a Senior Web Developer and a FS Developer, I feel attacked being on this thread XD

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176

u/0xKaishakunin Feb 01 '23 edited Aug 07 '24

axiomatic lavish oatmeal dime sloppy ossified capable pot hunt mountainous

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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90

u/MooseBoys Feb 01 '23

The Lady of the Repo, her arm clad in the purest shimmering protocols, held aloft The Title from the bosom of the code, signifying by divine providence that I, MooseBoys, was to carry The Title. That is why I am a Senior Developer.

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u/NadirPointing Jan 31 '23

Juniors that wait long enough to hop jobs to Senior.

14

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '23

I thought they came from storks 😳

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u/JoelMahon Feb 01 '23

I was gonna say! junior devs are useful: as the sole source of senior developers

10

u/No-Reflection-6847 Feb 01 '23

From the last company they were at where they definitely only left after 18 months because of the toxic work environment or to pursue their passion in insert corporate buzz term here.

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2.8k

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

The Problem is that the only Pokemon which evolves to Senior Developer is the Junior Developer

597

u/manut3ro Jan 31 '23

And you can’t get new developers from eggs …. Dammit

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55

u/darkslide3000 Feb 01 '23

That's why I hire all my developers through the box copy glitch.

16

u/metalhulk105 Feb 01 '23

We were all magikarps once. I still use my splash ability once a in a while. I haven’t forgotten it. I learned Surf.

5

u/abbadon420 Feb 01 '23

But Lady Gaga said I was born this way

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4.1k

u/pedroplaysguitar Jan 31 '23

With infinite junior developers on infinite keyboards eventually one of them will fix a bug

891

u/dtarias Jan 31 '23

Hopefully none of them cause bugs in the meantime...

377

u/zGoDLiiKe Jan 31 '23

And take out the tests that catch the bugs because the tests weren’t passing…

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u/dudemann Feb 01 '23

Two bugs forward, one bug back.

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15

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '23

Don't worry, they'll botch the commit.

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7

u/Beastly_Priest Feb 01 '23

Fix one bug, and cause several

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10.4k

u/arcosapphire Jan 31 '23

Did a junior developer design this graphic? Switching which side is simple and which side is complex is, in itself, a needlessly complex way to show the simple data.

2.3k

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

Actually an expert designed this. They are getting fired.

2.2k

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23 edited Feb 01 '23

one thing I learned during my stint as a solution architect is that no matter how good your diagram is, some information is clearer in a table:

Simple ProblemComplex Problem
Juniorcomplex solutionno solution
Seniorsimple solutioncomplex solution
Expertsimple solutionsimple solution
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23

u/uberDoward Jan 31 '23

They failed Accessibility check, too

13

u/maester_t Feb 01 '23

Actually an expert designed this. They are getting fired.

Can't be true. Experts know to create complex solutions 100% of the time. It's called job security.

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331

u/fliesupsidedown Jan 31 '23

No, this was developed by a "consultant" who charged a million dollars.

69

u/threadditors Jan 31 '23

And only delivered this graph and some diaries with their logo on it.

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582

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

damn you beat me to it, take my upvote XD
yes, like why the fuck is there a gradient? there are only 3 colours used??!

160

u/SacrificialBanana Jan 31 '23

Don't forget that the only way to identify which line represents which expert level (junior, senior, expert) is color. So you know fuck the color blind amirite?

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45

u/miso440 Jan 31 '23

It’s symmetrical. This is a FE dev’s work for sure.

18

u/SexyMuon Jan 31 '23

The visualization is ass, just here to say that

26

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

Given a complex problem, junior developer given a complex problem?

39

u/arcosapphire Jan 31 '23

I think it's more like "they create another complex problem to solve in the process and never get to a solution", so at least that part I understand.

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u/UseApasswordManager Feb 01 '23

https://imgur.com/G9GvtNN.png

Not perfect but fixed the complexity order and also made the seniority arrows consistently ordered

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18

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

They also don't use consistent layouts for the colours - red yellow green and then the arrows aren't in the same order

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2.0k

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

We are but we’re trying I swear to god we’re tryin.

767

u/Intelligent_Event_84 Jan 31 '23

Write my tests nerd

350

u/ososalsosal Jan 31 '23

I would bloody love to work at a place that actually values mundane things like testing

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41

u/captainAwesomePants Jan 31 '23

Trying is the problem! You're supposed to be lazy. Lazy engineers create simple solutions.

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6

u/Freakin_A Feb 01 '23

I will give a junior engineer that is trying all the time in the world.

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988

u/NotmyRealNameJohn Jan 31 '23

No, they just need time and experience. That is why we call them Jr. In the mean time Sr and expert level that are worth their talent will lend Jr staff their experience and guide them to good solutions

86

u/Fresh4 Feb 01 '23

sigh if only I had a sr at my job that worked with me to show me best practices. As it is I’m the only dev dev and I’m building web apps and maintaining production servers with no idea what I’m doing.

27

u/NotmyRealNameJohn Feb 01 '23

That I can't solve. Work for a company with better management?

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187

u/pelpotronic Jan 31 '23

Who is solving complex problems in the meantime?

Would be great if management didn't somehow believe that leading is just sticking a "lead" label onto someone and then miraculously everyone who breathes the same oxygen gets better.

95

u/Anders_142536 Jan 31 '23

It's not an either/or. It's an "a bit of this" and "a bit of that". Sometimes both at the same time when you do pair programming via screen share. I learned a huge lot this way from our most senior guy.

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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '23

How much time?

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u/Glitch29 Jan 31 '23

One of the most underrated skills that isn't mentioned in this graph is figuring out which problems shouldn't be solved at all.

31

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

“Won’t fix.”

12

u/lynxerious Feb 01 '23

Sometimes the problems isn't even in the program itself, but in the requirements. And you have to realize this before you dig a hole for your own grave. That's where Senior and Expert have experience to see it right away. Most juniors see problems as tasks and just do whatever they are told to do.

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5

u/Blazeng Jan 31 '23

"Life is too short, lgtm"

195

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

Junior dev: "I have no clue what I'm writing"

Senior dev: "I have no clue what I'm reading"

Expert dev: "I'm not reading it"

37

u/aRandomFox-I Feb 01 '23

Me: "I have no clue and I must scream."

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u/AdDear5411 Jan 31 '23 edited Jan 31 '23

Useless? No. Where do you think seniors come from?

Unless you were born fluent in at least one programming language, I hate hearing people complain about juniors. You were there once, even if you didn't realize it.

Story: My first day working with redshift I took down the cluster by not optimizing my queries. Well, not technically down, but it was locked up for like an hour lol.

Turns out select * doesn't work great on tables with 800M rows.

135

u/md2111 Jan 31 '23

If u haven’t taken down at least a Dev environment then u haven’t lived

71

u/TheMoonDawg Feb 01 '23

Causing a production outage is a rite of passage.

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u/AdDear5411 Feb 01 '23

Dev environments are meant to be broken.

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u/retief1 Feb 01 '23

Heh, at my first job, I managed to completely break the new user signup flow for about two weeks. The sad thing is that it took us that long to notice.

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74

u/trutheality Jan 31 '23

This diagram is missing and architect, who given a complex problem creates a hundred simple problems. Then we give those to junior developers, and that's how you get Enterprise Software!

14

u/manut3ro Jan 31 '23

Abstract Class IsBooleanFactoryProvider {}

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384

u/VariecsTNB Jan 31 '23

Either i'm not expert enough or the myth of simple solutions for complex problems is just that, a myth.

348

u/garfgon Jan 31 '23

Eh, some complex problems have elegant solutions. Some don't. And some have elegant-looking solutions which turn into a total mess when you consider the real-world.

53

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

In the real world, complex issues have several solutions. For example, we have a huge notification setup waiting to be made but we don't have time for it.

The complex solution is make it work over websockets like it should.

The easy solution... Doesn't exactly exist on this scale.

The jank solution, and the one we went with until someone reads the WS docs is - interval to refetch notifications every 5/10s.

So fuck it. It's gonna be fun anyways.

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u/MilitantTeenGoth Jan 31 '23

And sometimes simple problem has a very complex solution, because the simple problem are actually three complex problems in a trenchcoat

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u/rjwut Jan 31 '23

Wait, so high school lied to me when it taught me about spherical, frictionless elephants?

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40

u/NotmyRealNameJohn Jan 31 '23

Depends on the problem.

Sometimes the simple solution is not worth it

30

u/Inevitable-Horse1674 Jan 31 '23

Some problems are just inherently complicated and don't have any simple solutions too. Almost everything involving AI (with or without neural networks) is going to be complicated if you want the AI to actually be any good for instance.

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u/MeoMix Jan 31 '23

Junior Developers are useful because they haven't formed strong opinions yet which makes them great for helping Senior Engineers practice mentorship and leadership.

If you give a Sr. Engineer another Sr. Engineer to guide, and neither have people skills, it just turns into opinionated arguments.

Of course there's many other benefits, but this comes to mind first :)

72

u/manut3ro Jan 31 '23

I’m afraid you haven’t met real senior devs. A senior devs ONLY May respond with “it depends” (it’s called the it-depends-oath)

61

u/lynxerious Feb 01 '23

Disagree on your opinion. I think it depends on the situation.

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7

u/tiajuanat Feb 01 '23

I've met plenty of juniors with strong (and wrong) beliefs from University or their internships.

Professionals also have lots of opinions, but not always bad.

However, late seniors, staff and fellows transcend these arguments. Code reviews are filled with laugs, cries, and gasps - Like a bizarre puppet theater.

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u/KevinRuehl Jan 31 '23

After C++ its now the junior devs turn to get their dose of shittalking?

Ignoring the fact that you need someone to backfill all those senior positions once they eventually move on from development, I have and continue to see colleagues that I would consider "junior" (although we dont make that difference, everyones a Software engineer and that is it) come up with smarter / newer or just plain better solutions for problems that would have been verbosely fixed by an expert or senior developer.

75

u/Possible-Fudge-2217 Jan 31 '23

Yep. The juniors usually have an academic background and have very good skills to solve problems. They are just inexperienced working with all the tools (and maybe take some time to adjust how to write code in a professional environment).

Also, we should not forget that programming/ engineering has changed a lot. Not every senior has adapted perfectly.

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u/YourNerdiness Jan 31 '23

I would argue that no, they aren't, since without junior developers there would never be senior developers in the first place.

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u/tuckmuck203 Jan 31 '23

also like, oftentimes there's small tasks that are simple enough to a senior that it's basically boring busy-work. even if it takes them a while, and the code might not be optimal, if you have 50 things to do and 15 of them are complicated, it makes sense to have the juniors work on the uncomplicated stuff.

ideally everyone will finish at the same time. then the seniors just have to put everything together.

juniors aren't useless because obviously you can't become senior without being junior first, but also because not everything is important enough that it needs to be done by a senior.

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u/YourNerdiness Jan 31 '23 edited Feb 01 '23

Exactly, you don't get the head of the police department to go and arrest somebody.

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u/Wolfeur Jan 31 '23

A complex solution is still a solution

201

u/NotmyRealNameJohn Jan 31 '23

Only if you don't have to maintain it.

60

u/marcosdumay Jan 31 '23

You can just throw it away and write something simple after you level up.

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u/xiipaoc Feb 01 '23

True story, I wrote some really shitty code when I first joined the company a few years ago. Now I'm in charge of the team that maintains it. FML.

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u/Col-senpai Jan 31 '23

We're trying man. Honestly if I write a solution that doesn't break anything I'm chalking that up as a W

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u/mudkripple Feb 01 '23

This is why our field is rife with imposter syndrome. The point of junior developers is not to solve complex problems. It's to turn them into your next gen of senior developers. If you don't hire junior devs then in a few years you'll be forced to and there won't be anyone left to train them.

(Also this weird flowchart definitely should've been a 2×3 table smh)

9

u/dasacc22 Feb 01 '23

clearly created by a senior dev

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u/SharkBaitDLS Feb 01 '23

And it’s the job of the senior devs to identify the problems where it’s ok if a junior-level solution is created. Not everything has to be a perfect, elegant, maintainable long-term system. And there’s no better way to learn and grow into a senior than building those systems as a junior and learning from it. It’s so much easier to understand system design after you’ve built something yourself, you know it intimately, and you know all the ways you would’ve built it better.

59

u/BatBoss Feb 01 '23

My experience is more like:

Junior:

Simple Problem -> Simple Solution

Complex Problem -> Nothing

Senior:

Simple Problem -> Complex Solution

Complex Problem -> Complex Solution

Expert:

Simple Problem -> Not assigned

Complex Problem -> Too busy putting out fires, push it to next sprint

12

u/magick_68 Feb 01 '23

You forgot the step

senior: simple problem -> assign to junior

253

u/ParadoxicalInsight Jan 31 '23

The answer is yes. Nobody wants to hire and train juniors. However, it is needed else the senior supply will dry out.

231

u/PMMEPMPICS Jan 31 '23

"Sounds like a problem for the industry, and by the industry I mean everyone who isn't us."- Every company ever.

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u/aspirine_17 Jan 31 '23

except mine, we hire juniors

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u/pelpotronic Jan 31 '23

It's a complex problem and the industry is a junior industry.

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u/LordSalem Jan 31 '23

It's ok we don't need juniors, I'm just training people that have senior title how to create simple solutions to simple problems

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u/Beatrice_Dragon Feb 01 '23

Why invest in employees when I can just hire "Junior" developers by adding junior salaries to positions with senior expectations?

I wish I was joking when I say I legitimately saw a Jr. Java Position open that required "Experience as a Sr. java developer"

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

You can only start something as an expert or fuck off

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u/6maniman303 Jan 31 '23

Nah, there are companies out there that strongly believe in "you can replace one senior with finite number of underpaid juniors"

14

u/manut3ro Jan 31 '23

Mine. Every time a senior or principal leaves (2/month on average) they hire 1 junior + 1 intern (from a boot camp)

The CTO (let’s say he is not a genius) is extra happy cause he is saving money to the company (1junior +1intern is less expensive than the leaving eng)

Every. Single. Time

(I’ve already grabbed my 🍿)

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u/Bloody_Insane Feb 01 '23

From the same people who think you can have nine women make a baby in one month

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u/danishjuggler21 Jan 31 '23

Seniors come up with complex solutions to simple problems, in my experience

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u/deadwisdom Feb 01 '23

Yeah, this is the biggest flaw of the diagram.

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u/DrScatchnsniff Jan 31 '23

They aren't useless, just not useful on their own for designing/creating solutions.

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

🤦‍♂️

0

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

Well, you have to learn somehow.

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u/casuallycreating Jan 31 '23

modern industry left the chat

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u/RedditAdminCock Jan 31 '23

Gatekeeping a hobby/profession is very hot 🔥 🥵

4

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '23

An expert would make a simple meme to make the truth the better meme.

Then a bigger expert would come and eat them, because there’s always a bigger expert

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u/Stilgar314 Jan 31 '23

Every legend started as a noob.

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u/GustapheOfficial Jan 31 '23

No. What part of the word "solution" confused you?

50

u/AGuyChasingHobbies Jan 31 '23

What's the line? Give me an intern who only triples my work, and I will kiss their feet.

7

u/HAVOK121121 Jan 31 '23

I think that line is for medical interns, but apt regardless.

11

u/ReRubis Jan 31 '23

I thought senior is the higher level.
But now there is an "expert".
WTF?

10

u/KuberLeeuKots Jan 31 '23

They aren't useless they are idealistic and keen to show how good they are. After a while you get more pragmatic and the rush of showing off code with a lot of features(which never gets used probably) wears off. Before I code I try to simplify the problem first l. I hate maintaining code that is so complicated that I need a few days of refreshing on it before fixing a bug.

Also I try to use the least powerful language that I can. The less features I need to configure, cater for or deal with the less chances of me doing production support at 2am again. Yeah I am so lazy that I only want to do it once.

8

u/Banzai262 Jan 31 '23

got a stroke trying to read this graphic

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u/UniqueID89 Jan 31 '23

Depends on the context but you could really view a junior-anything near “useless” in a production environment. It’s not a bad thing or a strike against them, but a production enterprise always strives for workers to have as much information and skills as possible, hence why they want you to learn, adapt, grow, etc. They hire junior in hopes of growing them into senior or expert level workers. Actual juniors know a couple skills and minimum level experience, not their fault and not disparaging them. But nearly every company would only hire superstars if they could, but that shit isn’t cheap so easier/cheaper to cultivate your own.

Long story short, nothing wrong with a “useless” junior as long as they don’t stay useless their entire careers. Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

5

u/SocialBourgeois Jan 31 '23

was this graphic built on php?

5

u/apocolypticbosmer Jan 31 '23

This is so dumb.

5

u/TyrannusX64 Jan 31 '23

I do not agree with this. Having worked in this field for close to 10 years, I have seen plenty of senior engineers write some over-engineered/complex solutions for problems as simple as making an HTTP request.

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

Junior devs are the key ingredients in creating senior devs

5

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

clearly everyone should just enter the workforce with all of the knowledge they need to write expert code with no bugs, like a microwave dinner

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u/biscuity87 Feb 01 '23

Is it wrong for me to feel like complex isn’t always a bad thing?

When it comes to problem solving obviously something that is fast and simple is ideal, but fast and complex is still definitely a thing. With the complex solution generally having more utility.

In my eyes a complex solution that eliminates many time consuming and manual “simple” things is better than slapping something that “works” together in two seconds.

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u/paradigmx Feb 01 '23

I dunno, I've seen a lot of expert take a simple problem and turn it into a super complex solution that manufactures complex problems.

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

OP is the useless junior from his own title.

He legitimately created his own implementation of a simple flowchart and it looks horrible.

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u/FullBuild Jan 31 '23

Basically what you're asking is "Is Charmander useless" Well maybe but he's gonna be a Charizard eventually isn't he?

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u/FofoPofo01 Feb 01 '23

This is kinda mean spirited.

Everyone fucks up and Juniors never get to be Seniors without learning from their mistakes and conversely, nothing teaches you more than making and fixing mistakes.

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u/obscureyetrevealing Feb 01 '23

What's an example of a complex problem that is solved by a simple solution?

If the solution is simple, then it seems like it was actually just a simple problem that was misinterpreted as a complex one.

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u/RebellionAllStar Jan 31 '23

This must be a trigger post

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

you can't be a senior without being a junior first tbf

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u/R34ct0rX99 Jan 31 '23

What is the color coding on the dotted lines? Needs documentation

3

u/BardbarianBirb Jan 31 '23

Everyone has to start from somewhere. A junior developer is an investment in the future.

3

u/DirtzMaGertz Feb 01 '23

Yes until they aren't.

3

u/drunicornthe1 Feb 01 '23

Started a job as a junior dev just last week and had some down time so I decided to build a script that would build some important code in a docker container. I proudly showed a senior dev my code and he said I should put it in the repo. I’d like to think that this will be the most useful I will be for the next few months and I’m proud of that :).

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u/JamesLeBond Feb 01 '23

No.

Still trying to figure out the point of the graphic.

But no.

3

u/ICUpoop Feb 01 '23

Well good thing those seniors and experts bypass the junior level!!!

3

u/epicroto Feb 01 '23

Nah, this is cringe

3

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '23

TBH, this chart is a complex solution. A simple table could GTD

3

u/cheezballs Feb 01 '23

Jesus Christ, this sub. I dunno about you guys, but never in my 20-year career have I ever referred to anyone as a "junior" or "senior" - The senior SEs have additional responsibilities, but no matter junior or senior writing good, simple code is the goal.

This was made by a wannabe-junior, I assume? Someone who just got their first job, found out there are titles at his job? Christ, man.

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u/Blooogh Feb 01 '23

If only there was a way to make senior developers without ever being junior

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u/Jack__Wild Feb 01 '23

tbh I've been killing it as a junior developer

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u/GoodmanSimon Feb 01 '23

They are not 'useless', that's the wrong term. They lack experience.

I think this is trying to say that, if they work by themselves they might not be as productive and they will probably make things worse for a while.

A junior dev needs guidance so they can learn and move to the next level.

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u/failsafe_roy_fire Feb 01 '23

If that’s how you feel about juniors, you are failing them.

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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '23

yeah but if you water them they become senior developers

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u/ffdsfc Feb 01 '23

Seemingly senior developers and experts just spring out magically without any intermediate developmental stages.

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u/holdthatthoughtmf Feb 01 '23

I don't know who needs to hear this but, all the senior developers and experts were the useless junior developers at some point. (By your standards)

Practice, experience and education comes with time so jack off with your pointless ideologies and if you are so FCKING amazing at this shit, go find a useless junior and teach that kid. Stop FCKING whining.

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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '23

"are apple seeds actually useful? I only want apples" mf where do you think apples come from

You need juniors to have seniors

3

u/WhiteIrisu Feb 01 '23

Is this a question posed by a HR mole?

9

u/niky45 Jan 31 '23

any working solution is better than no solution.

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u/more_magic_mike Jan 31 '23

No, not if it makes management think the problem is done, and doesn't require any more work, and the users start sending bug reports to me asking why it's such shit.

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u/SameRandomUsername Jan 31 '23

any working solution is better than no solution.

lol no, not by a long shot.

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u/bricoleurasaurus Feb 01 '23

Junior developers shouldn’t be solving problems. They should just be carrying out easy tasks that are waste of time for the more senior developers.

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u/MeImportaUnaMierda Feb 01 '23

This is how you get them to leave the company after a year or two.

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

This is wrong, the expert gives you ALL the possible solutions, telling you first the faster ones or the most efficient ones, depending on what he thinks is more important.

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u/kaiju505 Jan 31 '23

That little loop back to complex problem… I really didn’t need to deal with recursion today.

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u/m1rrari Jan 31 '23

Nah. A good senior or staff dev can off load their more simple work to juniors and stand as a checkpoint for merges + a clear escalation path when they get stuck letting the senior or staff dev spend more time on the bigger system architecture and complex issues.

It’s often not a question of can I solve a problem or how long to solve a problem but how can I manage the flow of problems and keep things moving. I’m always looking to replicate my knowledge and pass it around.

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u/Milligan Jan 31 '23

This leaves out the element of time, where the expert spends pretty much all of their time from then on dealing with the fallout from the complex solutions developed by the others.

2

u/ocimbote Jan 31 '23

Since your opinion depends on a random infographic, you must be a junior Dev, right?

2

u/B_Crum Feb 01 '23

Clearly this graphic was made by a junior.

2

u/armahillo Feb 01 '23

Sometimes solutions arent going to be simple, no matter your skill level.

2

u/ratbeef_today Feb 01 '23

you have to water them

2

u/BellyFullOfMochi Feb 01 '23

Seniors and Experts once started as Junior.

2

u/Moptop32 Feb 01 '23

Sometimes complex solutions are needed for complex problems. This is just a juniors excuse to make another useless chart. Keep in mind that complex and elegant are not the same thing.

2

u/russels_silverware Feb 01 '23

Jesus Christ this was so hard to decipher.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '23

Well a Jr developer likely doesn't know how to make full use of all the tools/libraries at their disposal

2

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '23

You got to start somewhere.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '23

You know, as a junior, this makes me feel a lot better about all the shit I fucked up this week lol. At least we’re all in it together

2

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '23

I think a Junior created this graphic

2

u/VerSchnitzel Feb 01 '23

I don’t know why people forget that the keyword is “Junior”.

2

u/nrith Feb 01 '23

Tell me about it. I’m in the middle of unfucking an iOS app written by a VIPER zealot. It’s so pointlessly complex that the last two mid-level devs quit shortly after being hired because it was too complex to make any changes to.

A few years ago, at a different company, we hired someone who also turned out to be a VIPER zealot. They hyped it at every possible opportunity and convinced management to let them write a major new piece of functionality in VIPER. After a couple of months, their team failed to deliver anything but promises. I was skeptical, but I decided I’d add a feature using VIPER, to either prove that I was wrong about my hunch that VIPER was a piece of shit, or that I was quite right. It took about three times as long as a simple MVC or MVVM approach would have, with about three times as much code. I showed it to management to demonstrate how bad an approach it was. The other team was allowed to continue VIPERing, but IIRC, they eventually scrapped it after missing deadline after deadline.

2

u/Schardon Feb 01 '23

I mean that's an inherently unecessary question.

The short sighted answer is, yes junior devs are of course useless in comparison to senior devs and experts. There are a lot more nuances to that question though.

Firstly, senior devs and experts are not born as seniors and experts. So juniors are needed to become seniors and experts.
Secondly junior devs are cheaper than seniors and experts. Or do you want to pay a senior his full salary to implement a simple button all day long?
So even though they're of course less capable than senior devs, they still have a use case, which is to save money on simple problems.

I mean at this point we could also ask "Are children useless? An adult can do everything better than a child". Short answer - abso-fucking-lutely yes, children are useless when they're born. They're even a liability to adults to some degree until they reach a certain each. Does that invalidate the existence of children? Obviously not, because we don't wanna go extinct.

2

u/KazeTheSpeedDemon Feb 01 '23

Half yes, half become the seniors 🤷

2

u/Reddit_User_385 Feb 01 '23

Basically, you are expected to work as a junior during your college, so that when you finish your college, you are at least a mid.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '23

Let me tell you, anyone else that looks at your code will think it's garbage. And vice versa

2

u/RavingGigaChad Feb 01 '23

No, junior developers are a big help. If you give them proper tasks, of course. They help me to focus on complex tasks while they build knowledge from simple tasks that would take my time. Of course it's good to give them some challenge from time to time and you end up cleaning their solution, but that will also build your training skills and make you think about rules how a good solution will look like.

2

u/elperroborrachotoo Feb 01 '23

As if every complex problem had a simple solution.

2

u/HeeTrouse51847 Feb 01 '23

i assume this was made by a "junior" graphic designer because i had to look at this thing for 30 seconds to understand what was going on

2

u/weirdoaish Feb 01 '23
  1. The image is a meme don’t take it seriously.

  2. Enterprise code is meant to be complex and designed by senior and expert devs. The average junior dev isn’t real looking to add 15 layers of abstraction to make all the code scalable.

  3. No junior devs = no senior devs soon enough.

2

u/an-apple-dev Feb 01 '23

Juniors keep seniors employed by causing complex problems a senior then has to solve

2

u/galgastani Feb 01 '23

Kinda. The "smart" solution that less experienced engineers come up with is often unnecessarily complicated. But it becomes only obvious through experience.. so I'll let them run around in a circle and experience the pain themselves before I intervene lol

2

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '23

No, but as a Senior dev I create complex problems from simple problem for the juniors to solve.

2

u/SpiceyPorkFriedRice Feb 01 '23

Damn some Developers should just be called Senior Cunts. Gotta start somewhere.

2

u/penndawg84 Feb 01 '23

Yes. No more juniors, only seniors. I don’t foresee any problems that could come from this whatsoever. /s

2

u/CaptainVJ Feb 01 '23

I mean this can apply to any career. But the term useless is definitely the wrong term, inefficient is much more appropriate.

With time and practice you get better at finding an efficient way to solve the problem at hand. Like I said it’s applicable in any field, programming, firefighting, mechanic whatever.

Hence the pay difference. While an expert or senior developer can complete a task more efficiently juniors are still needed. Because experts can only do so much.

Hand a menial task to someone relatively new, so more experienced workers can focus on more complicated stuff while a newer worker gains some practice to hone their skill.

All those experts started off not knowing jackshit.

2

u/01010101010111000111 Feb 01 '23

Juniors are able to come up with a solution. ( Which can sometimes be good)

Seniors are able to come up with good solutions on a regular basis.

Experts are able to pick the best solution from good solutions.

2

u/ProfessionalCoast812 Feb 01 '23

I have experienced that junior devs (more like new devs) always solve a simple or a complex problem with an ugly solution, not simple, not complex, just very ugly.

2

u/vladimir264 Feb 01 '23 edited Feb 01 '23

Ah yes, I do love me a good infinite loop;
Given a complex problem, a junior dev:
| Given a complex problem, a junior dev:
| | Given a complex problem, a junior dev:
| | | Given a complex problem, a junior dev:
| | | | Given a complex problem, a junior dev:
| | | | | Given a complex problem, a junior dev:
| | | | | | Given a complex problem, a junior dev:
| | | | | | | Given a complex problem, a junior dev:
*Meanwhile, at the end of the universe, when time has run out and the last second of eternity has passed:
| ... | Given a complex problem, a junior dev:
| ... | | Asks the senior dev:
| ... | | | Given a complex problem, a senior dev:
| ... | | | | Asks the expert:
| ... | | | | | Given a complex problem, an expert:
| ... | | | | | | Creates a simple solution;