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Ask HN: What do you look for in a junior developer?

2 points by huntermeyer ↗ HN
When interviewing a junior dev, what key qualities or skills are you looking for? What would make you hire one over another?

Though optional, please include your job title. Much appreciated.

1 comment

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sovietbear
I tend to look for efficiency in algorithms. The company I work for commonly issues a coding challenge to applicants which is reviewed by multiple coders before any actual interviews. The coding challenge is typically a topological sorting problem. I'm much more likely to pass an applicant to the next stage if their solution is efficient vs not. Example specific to that problem is multiple for loops vs recursion.

Any developer that's been around for more than a year can probably with time solve almost any problem, the key for me is how they solve it and how fast they solve it. Obviously there are more aspects to hiring than can be laid out in a comment, but efficiency is a big one for me.

Btw, my job title is 'Software Craftsman'