Hopefully at this point I’ve convinced you that hiring junior developers is the right thing to do. But maybe you’re not in charge of hiring decisions at your company; or even if you are you need to get buy-in from the CEO, leadership team, or board.
When managing up you have to talk in the language of the people you’re trying to convince - what pain are they feeling and how can you solve it?
All apps have bugs, all teams have Business As Usual work, all products have small ways they could be made better, and all copy has typos. Why are you paying a senior dev £LOTS to do that work though? They could’ve done it just as well 5 years ago when they were being paid a lot less, right?
Junior developers are a great way to add capacity to your team for those smaller maintenance tasks, for a fraction of the cost of a more experienced developer. You might be able to get two junior developers for the same cost as just one experienced developer.
Supporting and mentoring junior developers is a great way for your mid-level team members to learn and grow themselves. If your team’s personal development has slowed down, getting them teaching can also help to get them learning.
If you treat them well and support their development throughout their time with you, junior developers can end up staying with your company for years. They’re less likely to get bored of working on your app or decide they need to move on to get new experiences, because all of their experiences with you will be new.
Having junior developers pick up the maintenance and BAU work can also help you retain your more experienced team members as they will have more time to focus on more interesting and challenging projects.
When hiring junior developers you’ll have more candidates to pick from much faster, and be able to bring someone on board more quickly. They are also more likely to have no notice period or a short notice period.
There is a lot more diversity in the candidate pool for junior hires, and a lot less diversity the more senior you go.
Also, it is much easier to build a diverse team from the beginning than to try to add diversity later on! If your team is already 10 white dudes and nobody else, folks from an underrepresented background are going to see that as a red flag and be less interested in working with you.
The true story is that our Head of Product and I sent them If you don't hire juniors, you don't deserve seniors by Isaac Lyman, and then sent them an email that included this sentence: