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Wouldn’t it be great to have an engineering dream team? To have the the Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson of software developers all working together? This sounds like the perfect team composition to crush your goals and create gold medal software.
Well it’s not.
Junior engineers play a critical role on any engineering team in a number of different ways:
More Familiar with Newer Technologies
- Depending on your tech stack, junior developers may be more familiar and more interested in new technologies. The pace of new tech advances so quickly these days, that in just a few years, more senior developers may be behind the times with the hottest trends.
- Generally, we find a lot of junior devs more highly skilled with FE frameworks
- Junior developers are typically more flexible than their senior counterparts and are eager to learn new technologies. If you’re looking to innovate, junior devs are a powerful resource to tackle new projects.
We All Learn by Teaching
- It is said that you don’t really understand something until you can explain it to someone else, which couldn’t be more true for software development
- It’s helpful to have senior devs teach junior devs to solidify their skills and understanding. It also helps senior devs take a fresh look at what they are doing and why. Sometimes the simple act of saying it out loud provides a fresh perspective.
Forces Discipline on the Team
- Senior devs may be able to work around small issues given their skill set. However these issues may come back to haunt you later and prevent scaling. Junior devs will often call out these shortcuts out of ignorance, which provides discipline as well as a teaching moment.
- Senior developers are forced to rationalize decisiones they take to someone else, making them think twice why something is right or wrong.
Gives a Jolt of Enthusiasm to the Team
- Junior devs are excited and eager to get coding experience. This enthusiasm can be infectious and reminds us all of why we started coding.
- Senior devs don’t really want to handle the boring or easy work. Junior devs will be excited about this work. Every project has its fair share of boring, tedious tasks.
What Does Your Team Composition Look Like?
It is important to think about team composition from this perspective to balance the skills and experience of senior developers with the eagerness and flexibility of junior ones. The cheaper cost of junior devs make this strategy even more enticing. Striking the right balance truly gets you a winning engineering team at optimal costs.
Over the last 15 years, we’ve constructed dozens of teams for clients and understand how to create this winning formula. One of the biggest values we bring to our clients is the ability to recommend the right team composition in terms of skills, seniority, experience, and culture to create an optimal team for your needs. If you’d to discuss what your team might look like, get in touch for a quick 15-minute chat.
