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Ask HN: Senior devs applying for junior position?

8 points by partisan ↗ HN
Hi,

I recently placed an ad looking for a junior developer for a project paying a very junior rate and yet have received a high percentage of senior developer resumes.

As a senior developer, I am curious about why that is. I am also wondering whether I should move forward with those candidates who are, according to their resumes, capable of commanding a rate several multiples of the one I am offering.

Your thoughts?

16 comments

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smt88
1) Resumes/past experience might be BS

2) Might have personality issues

3) Might have been fired

In my experience, having someone over-qualified is a bad move. However in development, isn't there always "senior"-level work to do?

I'd say it's not worth following up if you're busy, as great people usually know they're great...

johnny22
Great people know they are great? not in my experience. Usually it's the opposite.
partisan
I guess I agree that people should know their worth and act accordingly. I am wondering if these people are undervaluing themselves or if there are other issues at work. Still, I am understanding of the curveballs that life throws you and will hire accordingly.
pyb
What's your location ? It may be the case that the local job market's not very good at the moment.
partisan
NYC. I am hoping to find someone junior who works and wants to earn money on the side.
fsk
From a candidate's viewpoint, the NYC job market seems really bad right now. I've been semi-looking for a couple months with no interviews.

If you had a junior candidate and a senior candidate offering to work for the same rate, would you prefer the junior candidate? Why?

Fenicio
I'm the kind of person who tries to get a junior position in this case, and I don't know if I could be called Senior.

Let's say I've been working for almost 3 years in which i have developed fully on my own Android, Java Swing, Php, AngularJS, C and managed an apache server with FTP access and virtual domains.

I know half of the people I went Uni with would cry and weep at the prospect of doing my job, but still, there's nobody to say that I'm senior.

Maybe the person applying just doesn'ty know he's Senior, after all there's no Standard.

Maybe he's just unemployed and feeling the dread of poverty.

Maybe he has a shitty job and just wants to flee or get better opportunities of improvement.

chrisbennet
Once you've been laid off for a while it is hard to find work - they may be desperate. Ageism is very real.
partisan
I know it is... I am just at the point where I have to start thinking about securing my future against ageism.
mrfusion
Is it common to apply in hopes that the company has other positions that are a better fit? Could that be the case here?
partisan
I did say it was only a gig/project. Not sure if they read further into that?
danielki
As others have mentioned, there's no real standard for "senior" developers in the industry. I ran into this problem back in July when I was job hunting - half the companies I looked at, I'd qualify as senior, and half of them I'd qualify as junior.

Their thinking (and I know some people who've found this) might be that it's easier to get hired as a slightly-overqualified junior developer and promoted to senior within a year than to get hired as an average senior dev.

partisan
I guess I understand that rationale, but this was explicitly a project.
fsk
It might make sense for someone switching technology stacks.

Most of my experience is C/C++/PHP. Suppose I want to get a job using Python. I'm not senior, because I don't have 5+ years Python experience. I'm not really entry level either.

So how do I switch to using Python?

What happen when demand for my current experience dries up? I'd have to apply for entry level jobs in other tech stacks.

Am I really less employable than a recent grad? Is my experience really worthless? Was this a stupid career choice?

partisan
A fair point. Most of my experience is C#. I would be in the same position starting on non-MS technology.
Armslong
It's a tough market out there