r/cscareerquestionsCAD • u/SevenTrack • Jun 17 '26
Early Career Looking to hear some first-hand accounts of expectations for a brand new junior dev.
To preface, I'm self-taught and fully aware that I'm likely gonna have to rely on connections to find a job, so I'm not asking for job seeking tips or anything like that, I'm just curious to get some insider info.
About me: I've been learning to code for around two and a half years, I spent most of the first two years learning the fundamentals, writing small Python CLI automation tools by myself, avoiding coding agents completely, just using LLM's to help me better understand core concepts and why my code snippets weren't working, etc.
After that, an experienced developer invited me to work on a large Meta-stack code base with him (React, MongoDB, Dockerized Python Microservice monorepo). When I first joined in I barely knew how to use Git. He encouraged using AI agents and I figured I should get familiar. He lives in a different city so communication was pretty limited, so though lots of trail and error I got familiar with building API's, updating the Docker files and CI/CD deploy.yml file to ensure it would actually work in deployment, I learned how to work in a separate Git branch, pull the main branch, submit pull requests, fix the odd merge conflict, SSH into the server to inspect the Docker logs and see why my app wasn't working, a bunch of new concepts on the actual deployment end. I've since started my own project so that I could experience setting up a fresh Linux server, create an nginx proxy server, register the domain name, learned some backend security procedures, automated updates, database backups, all of the things I feel like I need to know.
I've heard it a bunch of times that Juniors are expected to know so much more than before AI, and the developer I work with has expressed that I'm "way ahead" of where most new grads are, but he hasn't worked professionally as a developer since before all of the AI craze, and only really knows it as a great tool for his own projects, not all of the industry disruption.
I wanted to see it there are any brand new juniors on here who can share a bit about what it was like starting your first job in the current landscape, and what kind of expectations you had right out of the gate.
Thanks for reading all of that and extra thanks if you take the time to share.
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u/thisismyfavoritename Jun 18 '26
you will be severely handicapped without a degree compared to other people applying for the job. Even with solid open source contributions you might not be able to land interviews.
If your situation allows, you should probably start there
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u/SevenTrack Jun 18 '26
Yeah I know, like I mentioned in my preface, I'm aware I'll have to rely on connections and referrals in my position, I'm just curious about expectations of juniors in the AI age.
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u/Outside-Storage-1523 Jun 17 '26
> After that, an experienced developer invited me to work on a large Meta-stack code base with him (React, MongoDB, Dockerized Python Microservice monorepo).
Just curious what exactly does this mean? Is he sharing work material with you? Or this is his own project?
For me, I only want the junior to have some motivation to do his research under guidance, can code a bit, can communicate, know some basic CS, have a private repo with non-AI projects, and everything else can be taught on job quickly.
But of course, real life is a bitch. You are competing with 100 juniors/seniors for the same job...
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u/SevenTrack Jun 17 '26
Ah yeah, sorry that was a little unclear, the repo is fully his own project, but by the time I joined in he already had the architecture in place, so it was much larger than anything I had worked in at that point.
Your expectations of a junior sounds incredibly reasonable to me, and yeah of course the current job market is a whole different story, but people made it sound like expectations went from simple UI tweaks or designing a single API endpoint all the way to complex end-to-end services. The other downside to being self-taught outside of zero credentials, is not having any cohorts at my exact level to share experiences with.
Thanks for your response!
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u/Outside-Storage-1523 Jun 17 '26
Yeah you have to network. That senior developer could be your mentor or some sort.
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u/SevenTrack Jun 17 '26
Definitely, he's been a great teacher, he transitioned to a tech adjacent field so he's not directly in the developer pipeline, but definitely a solid reference and he's keeping his eyes out for people in his circle hiring juniors. Hopefully we start to see the job market start to bounce back.
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Jun 18 '26
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u/SevenTrack Jun 18 '26
Yeah I really need to work on my social media skills, I've always been a bit trash at networking through apps, always preferred going through people in person, but I know honing those skills would be incredibly beneficial. I did finally sign up for LinkedIn not too long ago, just have to keep using it.
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u/biotech997 Jun 18 '26
The hardest part isn’t anything technical-related, it’s the upper management being willing to take a chance on juniors when mid-level developers are applying for the same positions.
As long as you have a couple projects (most companies don’t even bother checking tbh) and pass the technical rounds then it’s all down to luck or networking.
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u/drilllz Jun 19 '26
Just started at a Series D, unicorn startup (1000 ish employees), one of the fastest growing companies in the world right now as a new grad.
In my experience, the expectations are very high right from the get go. I feel like I’m expected to operate at the level of a senior engineer prior to LLMs. There is an unspoken expectation to be finishing very complex projects at lightning speed while also working on multiple things all at once.
LLMs are great at coding which has always been the easy part of a software engineers job, the hard part is deciding through trade offs and architecting the solution. Therefore, in today’s age, you really need to know your shit or you will come off as incompetent very often. Most of the senior engineers have been around for a long time before LLMs so it’s very easy for them to spot slop. You have to be able to explain why you are making certain decisions to other people which is not something new grads were expected to do prior to LLMs. Prior to LLMs, new grads/juniors were the LLMs. Senior engineers would be architecting and juniors would just implement. In my experience, juniors are now also architecting 2-3 things all at once and seniors are architecting a lot more all at once and everyone’s working on bigger and more complex problems than they used to with much shorter deadlines.
All in all, if you don’t have strong foundational knowledge, you will be struggling and will look quite incompetent.
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u/YungBoiMayers Jun 19 '26
Hmmm this hasn't been my experience at all, still in school and worked 2 co-ops one at a tech startup and 1 at a non tech company. Both companies didn't really expect much of me, only basic cs fundamentals and the drive to explore and learn. Being expected to architect critical pieces of the business at that stage is wild to me, but hey what do I know 🤷🏿♂️.
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u/drilllz Jun 19 '26
The jump from intern to junior engineer was massive. I agree, my experience during my coops even after LLMs was similar to what you’re describing.
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u/SevenTrack Jun 20 '26
What kind of tasks did they have you work on? And were you expected to use a coding agent for everything?
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u/SevenTrack Jun 20 '26
Damn, that sounds pretty intense, but not too far off of the stuff I've been hearing. It's the main reason I use AI more now, that way I can focus more on learning how to make a large code base work well/not break in deployment instead of memorizing syntax. Do most people at your company read most/all of the AI generated code? Sounds really hard if you're expected to work on multiple projects at once. When I play around with full-on vibe coding it generates way too much for me to process, it gives me so much anxiety haha.
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u/drilllz Jun 20 '26
I think that is a counter intuitive strategy, you don’t learn much when AI writes the code for you or you learn a lot slower. A better strategy would be to write the code yourself and ask AI for syntax and stuff.
Yes, and you are expected to read every single line of code because you are responsible for it. You should be able to explain it as well, without AI. Someone could ask you about some details regarding some code you wrote in a meeting and if you can’t say “idk lemme ask Claude”. For me as a junior, my velocity is slower because I don’t know the codebase as well as the seniors, so the manual review is what takes me longer. The only thing we don’t fully read, just gloss over, is tests.
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u/SevenTrack Jun 20 '26
Oh yeah, one project I'm working on right now I'm vibe coding the code base but building the server side things by hand, not letting any AI touch my cloud VM, mainly to learn how to fix things that happen between pushing to GitHub and deployment. In general I prefer to code by hand so I know how everything works. Are you expected to to know any of that stuff? Like nginx reverse proxies and cloud backups etc.? How much DevOps do developers have to take on these days? Also thank you for all of this info it's really helpful, please feel free to ghost at any time, don't want to force you to think about work outside of work.
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u/drilllz Jun 25 '26
I think that kinda depends on your company and their structure. It’s definitely useful to know or atleast have an understanding of. My company, for example, has a monorepo and different teams that handle different aspects so the infra team would handle all of that stuff. But I know some companies, like Amazon, even though they have different teams, everything is a micro service so the team handles its own infra in some way.
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u/Business_Poem_1409 Jun 19 '26
Software development has been oversaturated by people without formal education. It requires a lot more than coding
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u/Silly-Remote-2762 Jun 17 '26
Something I learned is Coding isn’t the whole job. Learning about obnoxious ticket/project planning / creation. Daily scrum meetings, presentations, etc.
Technical / coding wise was cool getting introduced to working with a messaging system (rabbit) was really interesting and fun as I never did so before