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Comment by raw_anon_1111 | Hacker News Reader

Okay. But that still doesn’t answer the question.

Why should I hire a junior who doesn’t know the what or the how. Instead of hiring a mid level developer who could be an excellent developer who can turn business requirements into code and is more than likely better at certain things than I am since they live and breathe it everyday and can both do the work without supervision and can offer valuable advice and say something that might convince me that I didn’t think things clearly?

Reminding you that the difference above a mid level developer and a “senior”/“senior+” is scope and ambiguity not necessarily technical depth in one area.

What does a junior developer bring to the table that I should use my open req on?

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In my experience it just boils down to:

1- You need a ton of internal knowledge so it doesn't really matter what they know past the basics.

2- Testing gets expensive with seniors

3- You can't get mid-senior level employees you like. I see very often companies having really high requirements for hiring leading to the only candidates passing being friends of employees. Juniors pass easier via the 'he's motivated to learn' path.

4- Juniors bring a motivation with them. Seniors tend to generally care less so a couple of energetic juniors can get them moving a bit quicker. Especially if you find a good one, since a senior really doesn't want to get outperformed by a fresh graduate. Also, since they usually suck at politics, it's easier to prod them about why things aren't working than the seniors who've played the blame game for 20 years and have perfected the art of dodging responsibility.

> Why should I hire a junior who doesn’t know the what or the how.

I'm not saying you should. It's the business model that will answer that question. But the traditional wisdom was that juniors are not costly and have few obligations tying them down. And juniors don't stay junior.

And some may know the what and the how, at least technically. What they may lack may be just how to develop their skills further to be useful in a professional settings. It's easy to learn programming languages, tools, libraries and frameworks when you have a lot of free time. And they're not asking to be your protégés, you're just training them to be useful for your team.

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