I've interviewed a ton of junior engineers. Our company was senior-heavy and we're just now diversifying.

80% of them should reconsider their career paths. They glaringly cheat during interviews, they can't answer basic software questions, and they're clearly in it just for the money.

They were never interested in software. They just saw the success of software engineers that put in a lot of work, and were fooled by the 2021-2024 hiring spree to think it would be easy.

To be fair junior developers almost universally kinda suck and you have to teach them the job. They'll take 10x the time to do a job a senior would, and do it in a way that is much more complicated than it needs to be.

The reason you bother with them is and has always been to create future senior engineers that understand your business well enough to ensure business continuity.

> they're clearly in it just for the money

That's often how jobs work. I happen to like my job, but let's not pretend like everyone is going to make sufficient money following their most passionate interests.

> they're clearly in it just for the money

It's a job, working for someone else. What other reason is there?

i don’t condone cheating but i also don’t blame anyone who follows a generally benign career path for its financial benefits.

That’s every profession. I interviewed someone once that claimed Linux skills on his resume. I asked a couple basic questions and his response was, “well I don’t know that but my dad does”.

Great, when is he applying?

I got a degree in mechanical engineering. There's these two technicians under me that for years I thought we just hired off the street and maybe they graduated high school. I have to show them how to use terminal. I have to show them how to fix a Python script.

Imagine my horror when I found out recently both of them have a computer science bachelor's degree from a UC Santa Cruz.

I've been programming for 25 years now because I really like it. But if it didn't pay, I'd do something else, because I really like not being poor even more.

I have no doubt any junior, no matter their background or degree, will break into tech fine like all of us did if they are in for the reasons we got in - being nerds and fascinated by software. You can't fake that.

I do think that's part of it. A lot of people jumped into the roles when they saw it as an alternative to other types of STEM or, heck, any work and was likely to pay a lot more money.

> They glaringly cheat during interviews, they can't answer basic software questions, and they're clearly in it just for the money.

I'm curious what they do to cheat during interview?

Going back 29 years to the beginning of my career, I'd say maybe 50% of the graduates in my class, probably more, either were not cut out to be engineers or didn't really have any passion for it(or both).

I can't imagine what the ratio is now after everyone was pushing their kids into coding and every douchbag chasing a high salary tried to enter the field. Maybe close to 90%?

I can't imagine there is much of an issue for bright, passionate folks just starting their career if they can manage to communicate their passion and skills to a company. Sure, they might not go directly to a fang, but there are literally tens of thousands of companies who staff engineers and if I were new that's where I'd target to get started.

Alright, I’m at the start of my career but do have a genuine burning interest in programming. Am I fucked or not?

> They glaringly cheat during interviews

How so? I am curious what cheating you are experiencing and how you detect it.

Exactly my thought. It's the same psychopathic cohort when quant finance was hot. Graduate to a 500k job? Too hard to refuse.

honestly at this point putting out a software-coded job requisition is getting the interview cheaters full stop now.

our noob to hero pipeline these days is just requisitions that cover some basics but flat out say its an entry position and a chance to step into something new. we quickly weed out the overqualified and find candidates who seem like theyre genuinely just looking to find a way to break into something new, and our interview process is largely centered around getting to know them as a person what they're all about and we seem to do an okay job triangulating "this kid is curious, seems like they'd glue well with everyone here". mildly grill on some technical stuff but mostly just to get a read on where they're at & make assessments on what we're willing to teach. we actually don't do whiteboarding coding exercises or any of those challenges, not really a fan of those and i've never felt like they were a useful litmus test on whether or not someone will be successful in a role. people can hide a lot of insufficiencies/ego/insecurity/toxicity behind coding exercises, polished resumes and mastering interviews. it is of our opinion that the journey to expertise/excellence also involves having a good grasp on who you are as a person & who you want to be, and a solid moral compass you can navigate with. because there will be highs and there will be some very low lows, any journey to excellence sails these seas & we're very interested in people who can be open and honest about where they might be.

at this point we've reasoned out that the normal requisition is just going to get an influx of people who think they're charmers and can rehearse an interview and then pan out to be a nothingburger. we've had a couple of those in the past few years and it's annoying. we don't hire often do but when we do we're just interested in having someone around that we like and seems eager to learn, we've had great luck with this formula and this seems to pluck out people who get lost in a sea of incredible looking resumes, we give them a good learning track and goals and they seem to leapfrog past every goalpost we've put in front of them. as far as juniors go, we like hearing about other weird non-computer problems they've solved in life. when we find the right candidate we kind of just know when we talk with them, they universally are pretty open about their own shortcomings but just demonstrate some sort of very passionate need to build or solve things and find a community where their contributions are valued. we see the mission as needing to build them up as a person first and the nerdy stuff is the fun sidequest they can join us and chase dopamine with. we all enjoy teaching & watching people grow so it works out pretty well and we've transitioned a couple to senior positions in the past 4-5 years. people who, when we first interviewed them years ago, may have not had any business on paper being in this field. people we're proud to have watched pan out to be incredible resources, some of the heaviest hitters our org has seen, and if im being real at this point really great friends.