Recently I made a post on LinkedIn regarding career advice for juniors, where it suddenly went viral after a few days. I am happy to say that, among the new hires, we hired a junior that struggled initially with their technical interview, but was above all a great cultural fit for the team. For us, having a supportive, non-toxic team environment far outweighs having to deal with issues down the line regarding bad personality traits. If you can have great juniors who are culturally fit to begin with, awesome, but it is not always the case. And usually it is far easier to cover a skill gap with support than a personality gap. As skills can be learned more easily at this level than a new personality.
For those curious to read it without getting redirected to the link, I will post it below
I’ve been reviewing CVs for a junior full-stack role lately, and it’s a pattern I’m seeing a lot: mentions of passion for software and coding in general. However, there’s quite a few who’ve finished their education and haven’t committed a single line of code, or done any projects in months. This is a common mistake junior devs make. I get it - you might feel burnt out, or maybe you’re just diving deep into the job search. But here’s the honest truth: if you’re not actively coding, even a little, you’re going to lose some of that hard-earned knowledge. Your brain starts to deprioritize things you don’t use regularly. Don’t stop coding. Even if it is 10 minutes a day. It pains me to have people come in for an interview and realize how much they’ve forgotten for not practicing for some time. Mostly because I genuinely want people to succeed, and some could be great engineers one day, but not practicing will harm their chances to be hired and might make them give up on the path. Pick something you like, it does not have to be pretty or finished, just a project, contribute to open source, anything to keep those skills fresh.