A lot of organizations make the mistake of only focusing on senior software developers. They have a preconceived notion that juniors are prone to mistakes, will hamper operations, and ultimately cost the business more than if they had simply hired a senior.
However, this isn’t a viewpoint you should hold onto. In fact, there are plenty of reasons why you should hire a junior developer instead of a senior. Below are a few of the main ones.
Seniors can stagnate
Technology is evolving at a rapid rate. Seniors can live off their past success. What can happen when you combine these two points and hire a senior? Stagnation – the type that will only hamper the overall growth of your business.
Think about it, once a senior software developer is ten years (or more) deep with their career, there’s a chance they continue to rely on practices and tools that, in this day and age, are obsolete.
As an example, take cloud computing and its rapid progression towards mainstream acceptance in the business world. If a senior wasn’t familiar – or accepting – of the shift to cloud technology over the past few years, they may have significant holes in their proficiency and knowledge on the subject.
Invest in building on their foundation
A junior developer isn’t going to know everything. They’re a junior for a reason, after all. Yet you shouldn’t necessarily look at this in a negative light. In fact, you can use the talent they have as the foundation and build on this to create a developer that perfectly fits into your organization.
For instance, you can invest in their growth by paying for training. Going back to the cloud example from before, say you want to introduce them to Microsoft Azure. You could start their education with az-900 certification training to get to grips with the subject, gain a Fundamentals certification, and move through the levels until they become certified to an expert level.
By doing this, you can mold your juniors into the ideal developers for your needs.
Juniors are the more affordable option
Even if you splash out on expensive training on a regular basis, junior developers are going to be significantly more affordable than their senior counterparts.
Using Indeed as the source, it is said the January 2021 annual salary for a senior developer is $108,777 on average. In comparison, a junior developer’s average annual wage is $63,953. While still a hefty sum of money, you could save almost half hiring a junior rather than a senior.
A complimentary combination
Even with the advantages gained from hiring junior developers over seniors, the best solution is to have a combination of both. Seniors are still a fountain of knowledge and can help juniors to advance their skills. In addition, juniors are eager to gain hands-on experience, and this means they can cover routine and monotonous tasks. This then frees up time for seniors to focus on more strategically important areas of your organization’s software development.
