How to Successfully Build a Junior Dev Team
Dylan Goings · Atomic Object · Day 1
How to Successfully Build a Junior Dev Team
300 hours of mentorship — technical and consulting.
Book reading groups, feedback practice, demos, tech talks.
What's different? The investment!
What is the image of juniors?
- Cheap — free up seniors
- Replaceable — no institutional knowledge
- Rentals — can't build new technical capacity
What does this mean for the senior devs?
With AI, we're moving human effort into more complex and chaotic modes of working.
The death spiral
AI writes more code, the dev is more "productive", free them up for high-level work, which leads to more productive work, and LOOP — a death spiral.
more code -> more "productive" -> freed for high-level work -> more productive -> LOOP
Reframe the juniors
- Think of juniors as not cheap — an investment.
- NOT replaceable — they are very unique and much more diverse (more important as work shifts).
- Invaluable, not rentals.
Two years of training, 5 year retention.
Heavily invest in early career mentorship, hire for fit and the future, and do more interesting work.
The skills have changed! But the need for people has not!