Straight out of the gate, junior developers are a hard sale, well, from a sales perspective at least. Offering clients a team of juniors when they are after seniors is never going to win you any contracts. It’s not surprising when the standard image of a junior developer is someone straight after university. Someone who is still trying to figure out what it means to be a software developer.
So why have juniors when you can have seniors?
From the outset, it seems like a no-brainer to have seniors over juniors, but things aren’t as simple as that. Incorporating junior developers into your dedicated team can be more beneficial than you might initially think.
For example:
- Reduced project costs
- Freeing up time for senior developers
- Benefiting from up-to-date knowledge
- Bringing energy to the project
- They won’t stay juniors for long.
Let’s take a closer look at each of those points.
Reducing costs without compromising quality
Let’s get the obvious positive out of the way first. Juniors are generally more affordable than their senior counterparts, making them a cost-effective choice for your project. This doesn’t mean quality needs to suffer; with proper oversight and integration into the team, juniors can contribute significantly while keeping your project budget in check. But to guarantee this, your dedicated team will need an experienced team leader. Someone who can demonstrate that they can lead and delegate appropriate level tasks.
There is a downside to this thinking though, mistakes made at an early stage become more and more expensive with time. So, if you are thinking about designing complex systems it’s best to leave the juniors to one side. However, by managing the project’s considerations to your budget, juniors have their place in bringing down costs.
Freeing up time for seniors to do their magic.
If the project’s foundations are well prepared and the dedicated team has a good leader, then juniors can be effective. In every dedicated team project, there are tasks that junior developers can do.
However, these need to be identified, well-defined, and assigned to each person according to their abilities.
Giving the routine coding to the juniors frees up time for seniors to work on project-critical tasks. Juniors need experience with writing routine code and bringing them into the fold allows them to grow. It also allows the senior developers the freedom to get the difficult things right. This strategic task allocation not only optimizes your team’s productivity but also accelerates project development. Ensuring tasks are well-defined and matched to each junior developer’s capabilities is key to this process.
Benefiting from up-to-date knowledge.
Juniors often come straight from academia with the latest knowledge and fresh perspectives on technology and methodologies. This can be particularly advantageous in a rapidly evolving field like software development. Encouraging juniors to share their insights can introduce new tools and approaches, keeping your project at the cutting edge.
Unlike seniors who can be set in their ways, juniors are more flexible with current methods and tools. Having team members who know about up-to-date methods only brings positives to the project.
Bringing energy to the project.
Fresh out of the gates and eager to please. Often tackling their first job in the industry and excited to show off what they know, juniors can be a way of adding fresh legs to older projects. Bringing with them enthusiasm they can help others rekindle their own passion for projects.
Juniors are a great way of injecting new ideas and thinking into the decision-making process. Breaking down the mentality of “this is the way we’ve always done things”. Allowing juniors to contribute to the decision process allows for creative solutions to be discussed. Having more creativity is never a bad thing when it comes to your project.
They won’t stay juniors for long
To be effective, Junior developers need tasks relevant to their skills and knowledge. Tasks that are not too small as to still be challenging but not too big to overwhelm and discourage them. Juniors are an investment opportunity and thanks to the extra costs in time and resources they can become MIDs very quickly. A junior developer’s potential is the greatest benefit to any company.
Hiring juniors also strengthens team cohesion. When junior developers join a dedicated IT team, they take on the company’s values, good work ethics, and flows. Investing in their development not only prepares them for more significant contributions down the line but also helps in building a cohesive team that shares your company’s values and work ethics.
Juniors bring value to a dedicated team
The benefits juniors bring—cost efficiency, freeing up senior developers, up-to-date knowledge, energy, and long-term growth potential—underscore their value in a dedicated team. While convincing clients of their worth may require building trust and showcasing the structured support juniors receive, the diversity and dynamism they bring to a project is important.
As a company that has had the pleasure of working with junior developers, we can say that they bring with them a lot of benefits. Juniors bring with them positives not only for us but for you. The diversity and energy that they bring are a cornerstone of any productive dedicated team.
This article was created with the help of Inspeerity.
