James Mahy’s Post

In my experience, having a portfolio was very useful to me as a junior, and now my open-source side project is one of the biggest drivers of opportunities in my career. The market is unusually competitive at the moment for all engineering levels, especially juniors, and anything you can do to reveal your interests and show that you're proactive, is a good thing. I would encourage juniors to have at least a Github link, because it's very little effort. Right now, every junior developer will be competing with bootcamp alumni who graduated with a portfolio. Even if you're self-taught, you can spend an afternoon following a ToDo app tutorial and put it on your public Github (better yet, work on something small but personal to you). It demonstrates that you have at least written one line of code in your life (infinitely better than zero lines), and shows that you have the desire to learn regardless of whether you have a job. It also gives a great anchoring point in an interview for a hiring manager, "Great project, tell me more about what you did here, what was the most difficult part for you". I'm happy to be a rubber duck for any juniors who'd like to bounce ideas via DM.

Great article. I think the only point I wouldn’t tend to agree with is not needing a GitHub… I think this shows willingness to learn, even if you have small, unfinished projects on there, you can be adding to it from as soon as you start your training course. In my experience as a Junior Dev converting from a different industry, it was instrumental in landing my first professional role, as it showed enthusiasm and understanding of basics 🥰

Hard disagree with this: "if you think a junior developer should be producing value, developing production level features in a short space of time". I expect this from junior developers I hire BECAUSE I will invest in onboarding, coaching and mentoring them. Pairing them with someone experienced (including me) to help them get there as quickly as possible.

Even experienced senior devs need a bit of this, especially if the existing product suite is diverse and / or legacy. Maybe not all of it but some of it.

James Mahy 💜 If they can get something even if its a uni project or any small examples it does help! To show their passion or what they are interested in. 🤟🏻

Out of curiosity, what are the considerations you would hire a junior dev?

If you hire juniors without proper mentor, processes, strategies and expectations from them you are killing your software long term because of their development approach. You don't know what you don't know, it's not that they don't want to do better, they are just not aware of how to do it, that's why you need to help them get there. On the other hand, I would always advise juniors to have some portfolio of the work they've done in their free time. Market is already so competitive and it will only get more competitive from there so simply having a degree/few courses under your belt for someone to actually give you some $$ for the work you put in is not enough. ^^

Can I come work for you?

I agree, but "May not deliver value for many months." If they don't deliver value immediately, it reflects more on you than on them.

I'm so grateful to have had a genuine junior role with a small company, fresh out of uni in 2012. Feels like it's much harder to come by for people without commercial experience these days.