Melissa McEwen
medium.com/@melissamcewen · Personal blog · on HN since 2017
Melissa McEwen, a software developer, writes essays on the developer job market, hiring, and the tech industry's culture.
What HN saysHer posts on junior developers and the job market get shared and discussed; one commenter notes the Medium paywall popup.
25HN people shared it
5linked it in comments
21stories submitted
1.5Kstory points
6 years agolast shared
2017people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Who Killed the Junior Developer?6 people · 842 points · first shared 2018 · 777 comments on HN
- 2JQuery Is Better Than React (2017)4 people · 23 points · first shared 2017 · 9 comments on HN
- 3Coders Should Fear What Happened to Writers4 people · 10 points · first shared 2017 · 1 comments on HN
- 4I don’t want to be a software developer anymore2 people · 331 points · first shared 2017 · 305 comments on HN
- 5A Guide To Hacker News For People Who Aren’t Men (2018)2 people · 141 points · first shared 2018 · 161 comments on HN
- 6Most Software Dev Jobs Are Bullshit Jobs2 people · 62 points · first shared 2017 · 56 comments on HN
- 7How i ended up with pet jumping spiders 187d70a3e2962 people · first shared 2017
- 8What if other professions hired like software development?1 people · 62 points · first shared 2017 · 60 comments on HN
- 9How to Completely Delete Your Twitter Likes1 people · 2 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 10The Rot Inside Tech1 people · 1 points · first shared 2020 · 1 comments on HN
- 11Bias against front end web development1 people · 1 points · first shared 2018 · 1 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
tmnvix · 2018-02-14
I just followed this link from the HN front page: https://medium.com/@melissamcewen/who-killed-the-junior-developer-33e9…
I was greeted with a popup informing me that I had now read one of three free stories.
zpallin · 2018-09-05
That's actually a false dilemma. Both are compatible goals. The idea is that the more people with these skills, the more innovation can come from it.
On that note, I don't believe "sacrificed quality" can come from an influx of more engineers, junior or not. Rather, a larger base of junior engineers has the opportunity of increasing the capability of existing senior engineers due to the paradigm of mentoring.
Here is an article (posted to Hacker News some time ago) that I often reflect on: https://medium.com/@melissamcewen/who-killed-the-junior-developer-33e9…
mamoswined · 2017-11-14
I'm surprised they didn't mention jumping spiders (Salticidae), which are notable because they are inverts, have the ability to see an unusual number of colors, and unlike the mantis shrimp can be trained on them. Also another advantage is they can be rewarded with sugar water. Evolutionarily, their eyesight is a marvel. No other spiders really have anything approaching it.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/05/150518-jumping-spider-colo…
I have a couple as pets (https://medium.com/@melissamcewen/how-i-ended-up-with-pet-jumping-spid… and sometimes have managed to get them interested in videos of other bugs but I'd like to develop something geared just towards them. There are a couple of things like this used in the lab, but nothing open sourced that I know of.
EarthIsHome · 2018-07-05
I'm loving all these spider articles that have cropped up on hacker news and elsewhere [0]-[4].
I used to be deathly afraid of spiders, but all these articles and videos over the years have eliminated my fear of them. I like having some around.
[0]: The extraordinary life and death of the world's oldest known spider - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16992596
[1]: Spiders eat an astronomical amount of insects - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15887468
[2]: How spiders fly - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17398383
[3]: How I ended up with pet jumping spiders - https://medium.com/@melissamcewen/how-i-ended-up-with-pet-jumping-spid…
[4]: Lucas the spider - https://www.youtube.com/user/joshuaslice
PatchMonkey · 2018-02-26
Or, we have too many people for the jobs that are hiring Americans. That pretty well explains both.
Trump would be right to constrict access to H1B1 visas for foreign workers in the US, in this case.
But we also have a problem of access to those coding bootcamps - everyone has a smartphone, not everyone has a modern desktop/laptop. As far as coding bootcamps, there's also this: https://medium.com/@melissamcewen/who-killed-the-junior-developer-33e9…
The same in the field of law: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/25/opinion/too-many-law-students-too-f…
Here's what employers are saying: https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/03/28/surveys-find-employers…
But a realistic explanation? Monopsony: too few employers competing for workers with any given skill set. https://slate.com/business/2018/01/after-all-the-talk-about-a-u-s-skil…
Monopsony is getting some attention: https://www.thenation.com/article/does-monopoly-power-explain-workers-…
And here: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/ask-the-headhunter/ask-the-headhu…