What DON'T you look for in a Junior developer?

Question

Why is this closed? It fits within the 6 guidelines for subjective questions!

More specifically what are the skills that you would not expect or require from a Junior Developer before hiring them?

TDD? Agile? Multithreading? Inheritance? Polymorphism?.........

For the purposes of this questions lets define a Junior Developer as being of less than 2 years experience. We might also say that 'skills' is a rather loose term and you may prefer to use things like 'exposure to..', 'basic understanding of..', 'significant knowledge of..' or any other phrases you see scattered across job sites.

Answer 1

It all depends on the company, I am a recent graduate and was applying for both Junior and Graduate positions.

Most companies will expect a Junior developer to be competent in at least 1 programming language, you dont have to be an expert but you have to show potential, passion and a knack for programming, plus some exposure to OOP and other programming concepts. You will be up to date with technology and know some of the latest innovations, learning shouldnt be a chore for you but a fun activity.

You have to be willing to learn and take on new challenges and learn new technologies, the key thing though other than technical ability is being able to show a true passion for what you want to do, knowing 5 different languages will count for nothing if you dont truly enjoy what you do and companies will spot this.

Starting out as a new developer is an exciting thing, you are about to be exposed to development in a real environment, if you are dishonest in your interview you will be spotted when you start, the best thing you can do is be honest and show what you know and what your are willing to learn and even if you are weak in any areas and know you can improve in those areas.

Junior developers are a long term investment to most companies and you dont have to be a guru but just ready to work hard and realise your potential.

Answer 2

Well, for someone with 1-2 years of job experience I would actually expect some familiarity with most of what you list. I would not, however, expect actual work experience in these areas - there's only so many jobs you can do in a year :-).

Instead, I'd look for interest in learning these things: stuff like side jobs, jobs while studying, consulting gigs, collaboration in free software projects, hobby projects... Basically anything that shows interest and ability to learn new stuff. I would probably even rate that higher than actual experience in some cases - you can always meddle through...

Answer 3

How to prepare wild game. It's occurred to me now, that I have no idea of the ability of anyone I've interviewed to prepare wild game.

Beyond that, it depends. I'd certainly expect them to know what most of those examples you list are. Also, if they'd studied computer science, I'd expect them to have a reasonable knowledge of the science of multi-threading, but not necessarily much experience of the craft of writing multi-threaded code.

A passionate coder would quite often have some niche that they'd really got into, and have senior-level knowledge of that niche, even while they were still at a junior level generally. I'd want to talk to them about that niche and try to see a bit about how they think as a coder, even if it had no relevance to the job.

A potential hire could even lack in something that was a genuine requirement, but give confidence from experience and knowledge elsewhere that they'd pick it up.

Hell, even with the wild game, knowing what sort of attitude they bring to it would tell you something useful; just not as useful as other things you could ask about.

So in all, I don't think this question is particularly meaningful.

Answer 4

Who is junior developer? I think this definition differs company by company and moreover it differs by country. For example some countries strictly differs between positions for graduates (no experience at all) and for positions for juniors (at least some experience). Other countries count graduate as junior.

When I get my first real job in international company, I skipped both graduate and junior positions. I had some experience with .NET (including part time job in bank), I worked as MS Student Partner, I helped with teaching C#/.NET at university and I had MCAD certification (WinForms, ASP.NET, WebServices). So simply there is no real definition who is junior developer.

In another company I worked for it was somehow defined that positions should be differed by following criteria but it was not rule of thumb:

• Junior - is able to write either WinForm or ASP.NET applications and has basic understanding of SQL
• Standard - is able to write all WinForm, ASP.NET or distributed applications and has good understandign of SQL (usually certifications were required to prove that)
• Like a standard but in advance he knows some MS server very well (MS SQL, SharePoint, BizTalk, ...)

My expectations from junior are not in a way of experience but in a way of overview and basic understanding. Being able to write a code in .NET is a must (we are talking about Junior .NET Developer). Understanding to OOP concepts is desirable. Than based on type of developed applications (shoud be part of job despcription the developer applies for) Junior developer should understand at least basics of for example: SQL, Web Development (HTML, CSS), XML etc.