Hire Junior Devs!

Everyone in 2026 wants to hire senior developers. I’ve worked with companies that want to build entire dev teams out of senior developers. That sounds nice on paper, but is not the way to build a good team. When I’m putting together a team, I like to include a range of experience levels, most prominently junior developers.

Here’s why:

Most senior developers are set in their ways, which makes sense given that they’ve been working for long enough to develop ways. They will contribute more to your project at the beginning. But they will generally not improve very much, get bored easily, and will always have one eye out for a better opportunity. Plus they cost more!

Junior devs are the better long-term decision. They will start out needing a lot of help, but will develop fast in the right environment. Since they have not had time to develop their own ways, and have no context for most of the problems they will face, they will approach issues with a beginner’s mind. They will spend the time to come up with good solutions and acquire valuable skills instead of trying to slap a solution they learned elsewhere onto a problem that it does not quite fit.

Because they are cheaper and have fewer employment options, you will be able to hold onto them for longer. And the longer an engineer has been working with your tech and within your organization the more valuable they become. If they don’t develop the way you want, they’re easy to replace because there are a lot of them looking for work and your requirements for them are not as rigorous as those for seniors.

Here’s my game-plan for putting this into practice:

I hire 1-2 senior devs depending on the desired size of the team, and junior devs for the rest. I give the seniors a coding challenge but not the juniors; this will speed up your interview process. For the juniors I don’t focus on what they know in the interview. I get them to talk about what technology interests them, and favor those who are the most curious and self-motivated regardless of experience.

I work closely with all of them with different goals. For the junior devs, I want to teach them the skills they need to be a good developer, especially in the era of LLM’s where those are more difficult to learn. For the senior(s), my goal is to get them comfortable with leading a team, without needing to do it full-time. I give everyone a long enough leash to come up with their own solutions, and check in with them frequently enough to keep them from getting completely off track. When they want help and I’m not around, I encourage them all to collaborate with each other, and for the juniors to ask the seniors for help when two of them can’t figure something out together. This way they get the benefit of having me around without becoming dependent. Eventually your org will have a team of homegrown senior devs and a leader waiting in the wings who is already known and liked by all and ready to step in and take over when I quietly step away.

Developing developers works. And once you’ve done one of the cycles described above it becomes self-sustaining. The lead developer will vet new developers as the team expands and turnover happens (and it will since your junior devs have gotten so good), groom one or more of them as a replacement, and so on and so forth. So next time you’re looking to start a new team or augment an existing one, give juniors a chance. I think you’ll get more of out it than you expect.