Jimmy Jacobson’s Post

Should you mostly hire senior or junior engineers? This is a tough one. Let's look at pros and cons: - Seniors are expensive, juniors are cheap - Juniors work longer because they love to learn - Juniors think technology, seniors think product - Juniors work harder because they want to learn - Seniors are opinionated, while juniors are curious - Juniors love emerging tech, seniors love proven tech - Seniors need other seniors, while juniors need a senior When I have to assemble a new team I always aim for 2 senior engineers and the rest juniors (or mid). That way seniors have someone on their own level and juniors have 2 different mentors to learn from. Honestly, hiring juniors is underrated. It's hard to match their happiness, hunger and ambition levels. Plus, it can pay off big time too. If you hire the right talent (never hire for knowledge, always for attitude) and place them in the right environment, juniors will run circles around other developers in 12 months. I've witnessed this myself so many times before. But there is a caveat: For this to work the whole team needs to be co-located. If you can tick off all the requirement boxes, hire juniors. It can be one of the most cost-effective investments you will make. --- I am Ilia and I love watching junior engineers grow

Don’t just hire experienced seniors. Sure, senior engineers often know their stuff and can provide great value to a team, but so can junior engineers. How do juniors provide value? - they question decisions and make you think “actually, why do we do it this way?” - they are hungry to learn and have the enthusiasm to go with it - they can be trained and adapted to your team easier - they bring so diversity to the thought processes, often suggesting things that have never been tried - treated correctly, they can be a long term investment to your team and the company If we don’t hire juniors, we risk becoming stale. By having a balanced team of experience, you are both looking at the now (through experienced engineers) and the future (through juniors/apprentices). #juniordeveloper #softwaredevelopment #hiring #hiringdevelopers

At Relume we exclusively hire full-stack engineers, and here's why this strategy is a game-changer for us: Efficiency in Workflow ⚡️ With a team proficient in both frontend and backend, waiting times are slashed, accelerating our project timelines. Holistic Design Insight 🔍 Our engineers' involvement across all areas results in more comprehensive design decisions, enhancing the overall quality and user experience of our products. Empowered Ownership 💪 This multidisciplinary approach fosters a sense of ownership and pride among our engineers, as they see their contributions come to life in a more tangible way. But we recognize that what works for Relume might not be the universal answer. How does your company navigate the complexities of engineering roles?

Don’t just hire experienced seniors. Sure, senior engineers often know their stuff and can provide great value to a team, but so can junior engineers. How do juniors provide value? - they question decisions and make you think “Actually, why do we do it this way?” - they are hungry to learn and have the enthusiasm to go with it - they can be trained and adapted to your team easier - they bring so diversity to the thought processes, often suggesting things that have never been tried - treated correctly, they can be a long-term investment to your team and the company If we don’t hire juniors, we risk becoming stale. By having a balanced team of experience, you are both looking at the now (through experienced engineers) and the future (through juniors/apprentices). #juniordeveloper #softwaredevelopment #hiring #hiringdevelopers

Why do companies hire people to be idle a lot of the time? https://buff.ly/416ujtc The biggest tech companies employ a lot of engineers. They are paying a lot of engineers. Some of them do very little, with employees saying they "were paid to do little-to-no work"1. So... why are they paying them if there isn't a lot of work for them to do? #hiring #tech #employees #engineers

I call 50/50 split between management and hands-on involvement a death zone. Something like 70/30 can work well: you're mostly focused on one activity type (be it management or individual contributions) and partially covering another activity. And there's a wiggle room to temporary dedicate more time for one of the areas without another suffering too much. Once it's 50/50, it becomes unsustainable once one of activities requires extra attention. There's a critical technical issue that occupies 100% of your time for a day? You will go back to a pile of managerial issues that will occupy you 100% for a few days instead. You spend a day dealing with management stuff? Now there are deadlines at risk with your hands-on obligations. For this to work for you as an engineering manager, you got to be very conscious what you can afford to commit to at any given period of time. Team is running smoothly → can take on more hands-on work for the next few weeks. Got to onboard new employees or push an organizational change → keep your hands off code except for a few limited things. Pick one chair and put your feet on another one instead of trying to sit on both.

𝗦𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻 𝗼𝗱𝗱 𝘀𝗽𝗼𝘁 🤨. There's a massive demand for mid-level/senior developers, creating many opportunities and great pay 💰. At the same time, getting a junior job is hard because companies aren't hiring as many of them, and the supply is relatively high. So, standing out of the crowd can be quite a challenge 🌪️. It's a complex balancing act to hire and scale a team⚖️. On one hand, there's a perceived "safety net" in hiring seasoned engineers with proven track records – a default choice when time constraints limit the ability to mentor new talent. 𝗬𝗲𝘁, 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀 𝗮 𝗰𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁: 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗱 𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗼𝗳 𝗷𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁.🌱 Embracing juniors not only injects fresh perspectives and energy into your teams but also enriches your senior staff's mentorship skills, fostering a dynamic, growth-oriented workplace culture. Ultimately, this strategy fortifies your company's future, building a robust pipeline of well-rounded, skilled professionals. 🌱🚀 Looking for talent or advice 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘆 𝗧𝘂𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗼𝘂𝘁🦅

Thoughts from Codingscape CTO Jimmy Jacobson on how to hire senior-level software engineers. TLDR: don't offer them boring jobs ✅ "Engineers don’t want boring jobs — and companies struggle to hire senior-level engineers because they don’t understand this. Top-caliber engineers have no interest in taking on a job that involves updating phone numbers on top of mobile headers, especially when they were doing multi-cloud development in a previous project. Furthermore, signing on to work with most companies these days means committing to a 3 - 5 year lock-in to earn RSUs and additional options. It’s a lot of uncertainty: What will I be doing the whole time? Will the company even make it? Engineers, for the most part, prefer stable, well-defined work that lets them spend time with their families and hobbies over buying into somebody else’s IPO dreams. We’ve taken that into account at Codingscape. We have no issues with hiring senior engineers because the work is engaging, there’s always another project to work on here, and their role provides a great level of stability and freedom. In other words: there are no boring jobs at Codingscape." Follow Jimmy Jacobson for more wisdom on growing your senior software engineering teams 🧠 #software #seniorengineer #developers #softwareengineers #devs

We're obsessed with hiring cracked engineers. When we say cracked, we mean: 💪 You take extreme ownership of ideas 😀 You have unwavering optimism in the face of change or new ideas 🥳 You make people feel more excited and energized 💅 You behave in a completely authentic way 🙏 You apply themselves to your craft with with a quasi-religious fervor Sounds like a tech bro nightmare, right? Wrong! The following are definitely not prerequisites to being cracked: 🍎 Fancy companies on your resume 💡 How experienced you are 💸 A very successful side project (unsuccessful ones are just as valid)

Don’t just hire experienced seniors. Sure, senior engineers often know their stuff and can provide great value to a team, but so can junior engineers. How do juniors provide value? - they question decisions and make you think “Actually, why do we do it this way?” - they are hungry to learn and have the enthusiasm to go with it - they can be trained and adapted to your team easier - they bring so diversity to the thought processes, often suggesting things that have never been tried - treated correctly, they can be a long-term investment to your team and the company If we don’t hire juniors, we risk becoming stale. By having a balanced team of experience, you are both looking at the now (through experienced engineers) and the future (through juniors/apprentices). #juniordeveloper #softwaredevelopment #hiring #hiringdevelopers #webdevelopment