Netflix only hires senior engineers. I’m sure this works in their favor, which leads me to wonder why other companies don’t do the same. Of course if no company hired junior engineers, our industry would grind to a halt, but I would think that most companies are “greedy” (in the algorithm sense) and do what’s best for them. I seriously doubt most junior engineers stick around to reach senior in their first company.
Most companies can't afford to only hire seniors. We have to 'grow our own'
Most companies don’t see as much benefit from top engineers. Netflix is unique in their business model. But streaming is quickly becoming commoditized technology. Netflix is like snap, they pay a lot because they have to sprint and keep ahead of the competition, or else they lose. Same with Lyft. Companies not paying well like google are confident in their market position and don’t need to shell out, those extra engineers aren’t helping them keep their bottom line.
I think there’s an argument to be made in this case to hire people with 1-2 years of experience, but not fresh new grads. Fresh SDE 1s (unless they have significant internship or side project experience) require constant handholding for the first 6 months and aren’t fully productive for a year. Do you think Amazon would be better off if we only took industry hire SDE 1s? Agreed that not all companies need senior+ engineers.
Google not paying well? Sir, this isn't Amazon.
Your assumption is wrong. Junior engineers are needed for the grunt work.
If you really have so much grunt work that you need an army of juniors, that probably means a senior needs to do a better job of automating processes
Nah, bugs happen, small features and tools are needed. They are a great way to learn before giving them large cross org features.
I personally want to see the company that fully leans the other way into thousands, nay, tens of thousands of interns
Fuck that... you’d get garbage rewriting of everything. Lol
The rewriting would be done by interns, so very low cost
How many engineers does nflx have? When you're not too large it's easier to just manage attrition by poaching. Also, nflx is a very narrow business and the product is relatively simple from a tech pov and doesn't require a full frontal assault to solve. When you think of where nflx spends most of it's $$, it's content, and they have an army of Junior people.
Works in their favor, lol. Netflix got ahead of the market, doesn't mean they are the best. When was the last time you logged into Netflix and checked your recommendation? Hiring only a certain set of talent pool reduces diversity. Ideas comes in all forms regardless of experience or other factors.
Diversity is just bullshit. China has no diversity and it didn't prevent their rising.
Agreed but China is not considered an Innovator like USA. China doesn’t have like the most companies of fortune 500. China doesnt dominate the word in every category like sports, entertainment, technology etc
You know junior engineers are single, probably have no life and are willing to sacrifice their life in country and more willing to drink Koolaid. If they stay after ramping up, they can be asset to the company.
Plenty of smaller startups go this route early on. The larger you get the harder it gets to find the more experienced talent and have budget to pay for it at scale.
Keep in mind that Netflix has one product. Only one. And we are pretty darn good at it. And the entire engineering team is basically in one location. It is far easier to remain in a startup mode in terms of talent when all the focus is on that one product. Most of the super giants of today (G, F etc) have all started out lean and mean and have only grown bigger after they started tasting success. When you start expanding horizontally with a variety of products, and in a variety of locations all around the world, it is not as simple anymore as a company to remain the same way.
Who will move protos? Who will change configs? Who will fix bugs? Who will do other small tasks?
I do all these in my daily work. Doing them probably takes less time than asking a junior developer to do them.
Well we usually have 100+ in our backlog. We make juniors do it. At Google it’s not like they are dumb. They’re just less experienced.