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OffTopic > What treatment do junior programmers get...

#136758 - keldon - Sat Aug 04, 2007 6:11 pm

Since I'm mostly looking for junior developer roles what can I expect for the first year?

#136772 - simonjhall - Sat Aug 04, 2007 8:27 pm

Treatment?
I started my current job as junior programmer (as I'd come straight out of uni), and I know a couple of ex-juniors.
Here's my experience of the role:
- you'll write the same code as everyone else
- you won't be trusted with difficult stuff
- you won't get to know about the slightly more classified stuff
- you won't get to play with 'rare' hardware
- you'll have to listen to people who are more experienced than you, even if they're talking complete rubbish
- ...on the flip side they're normally right
- people will rarely depend on you
- you'll get the lowst pay of all the programmers, but still more than everyone else :-)

The secret I found to getting promoted is to make yourself indispensible and show a passion for what you do...but again on the flip side you can get a bit pigeon-holed for certain roles :-(

EDIT: btw many juniors are still juniors after their first year...some can be for even two years
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#136855 - Lynx - Sun Aug 05, 2007 11:02 pm

Quote:
The secret I found to getting promoted is to make yourself indispensible and show a passion for what you do...but again on the flip side you can get a bit pigeon-holed for certain roles :-(


This is with any professional career. You need to be valuable to the company, but not to the point they will not promote you because they can't replace you.
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#136869 - gauauu - Mon Aug 06, 2007 1:50 am

keldon wrote:
Since I'm mostly looking for junior developer roles what can I expect for the first year?


It also really depends on the place where you're working. If it's a bigger place, you'll get the boring, tedious work to start. A smaller place is more likely to use "junior" just to mean that they're hiring someone with less experience for a lower paying job, but you still might get cool work.

Either way, like the other posters said, if you do really great work, they'll keep heaping more and more interesting stuff your way.