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Pro juniors, or half a million "lost" developers

About the study


Introduction


In this article, we will talk about pro-juniors - developers who have already taken place in one of the technologies, and chose to develop in the profession by changing the profile stack . About how pro-juniors change jobs, what difficulties they face, and how potential employers perceive them. It is quite difficult to determine the exact number of pro-juniors, but based on the available data, I assume that from 0.2 to 2% of the developer population falls into this category .

about numbers
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Perhaps, due to the relatively small number of this group of specialists, neither the specifics of their retraining experience, nor the specifics of employment and hiring, have so far been the subject of substantial discussion or research. However, the lack of a clear interest in pro-juniors is more difficult to explain as soon as we move from relative to absolute values: even 0.2% of 24 million is almost half of the total number of developers in the Czech Republic, and 2% or 480 thousand developers are already significantly more developers in Russia.

Six months ago, I started working on a research as part of my graduation work in order to understand what the professional experience of pro-juniors consists of. Below, I would like to share the main storylines that were highlighted during a series of interviews with pro-juniors, recruiters and HRs.

about research design
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In order to check whether the selected plots are statistically significant for a wider audience, I run a survey . If you have experience changing the stack, you are just planning to learn new technology, or for some reason postpone retraining, I invite you to take part in the study.


Key Stories


Summary and general considerations




  • The super-ability of the pro-junior in the eyes of the employer is personal motivation .
  • In the course of communication with a potential employer, it is advisable to find out the intersections in the salary factors and skills / experience of the applicant. This can be of great help in discussing the level of compensation.
  • Experience in solving business / technical problems relevant to the employer is more important than knowledge of a fashionable framework (if the framework itself is not a vital necessity for the employer).

Pro juniors in the eyes of the employer


During the interview, 3 groups of factors were identified that set employers' expectations regarding hiring pro-juniors.

  1. Basic qualities and expectations - the absence or presence of these qualities in the candidate determined the decision to hire a specialist.
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Of particular interest to me were those cases where developers were able to maintain a salary level or get more compensation when switching to a new stack. I identified two subgroups of factors noted by respondents as the most important when agreeing on compensation conditions.

Personal abilities

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  1. Job experience of the applicant
  2. Technical expertise The
    Pro-junior had specific technical expertise obtained during the work on the previous stack, but it was extremely important for the employer (for example, creating and supporting video-streaming systems).
  3. Business Expertise
    A deep understanding of the employer's business industry (for example, knowledge of the specifics of regulating health-care services in Arkansas).

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Savings on payrolls

Contrary to the zero hypothesis of the study, savings on payrolls were not the basic expectation of employers when hiring pro-juniors, and either were not mentioned at all, or were described as a short-term discount for the period of retraining of a specialist. Given the investment in training, mentoring, and the total cost of onboarding a new employee, such a discount was 10-15% of the cost of hiring a ready middle in the market, or one monthly specialist salary per year.

Personal experience of pro juniors


The question of professional transformation, addressed to the developers, was divided into 3 storylines: obtaining skills and mastering new technology, the level of compensation and the features of interviewing.

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