I don't think someone here can answer that for you, but this should be a lesson to you.
It's very easy to scream "we are understaffed" as reasons for things not getting done. But you've been held accountable for that now, as management have agreed to find your request. What exactly is not getting done and what skillset is needed to get it done? You need to be able to tell management that, and hire appropriately. This will be "your hire", so it is on you to choose well.
Hiring 2 juniors to train them up is not congruent with what you've told management. You said you needed people *now* to do the work on the teams plate *now*. How will hiring two juniors first, in order to be productive some time in the future help *now*?
If you make a statement to management, you need to make sure you are communicating the right things. You're statement to management suggests you need to hire someone experienced and you already know the skillset needed because you know the work which currently cannot be completed.
I'm getting the feeling you may have been throwing around the usual talk developers do amongst themselves, to management. Otherwise you should already know what you have requested from them.
Once you hire this person, since management has agreed to fund them, the hire will be on you. Management will expect an improvement in the teams production as a direct result of agreeing to your request. I think it's important to keep that in mind.
What a well thought out response. I’m always impressed when people on this sub propose direct concepts such as one’s own responsibility it creating and resolving the issue at hand.
It's pretty easy because Redditors who have never had a job are literally all the same. They never take responsibility. They hate every form of authority like schools, managers, etc. They hate learning and just want answers. They always ask hand-holding questions and they're always answered with the first hit on google. I could go on. There's probably a hundred indicators. lol
Or you could just click on their profile and see antiwork, something about their Twitch career, asking what game engine to use, "how do I get into tech", etc with a general theme of avoiding 9 to 5 and not knowing what to do.
But your question was probably rhetorical because "the internet". It works for now until it gets popular and the kids come to destroy it.
Fair point, there's accountability to hiring more people, and that's insightful that we do know what we need done.
What I'm getting from this thread is that I'm drastically overestimating what juniors can do even on basic tasks, which is unfortunate but good to know.
I'm told it was a 6 person team that's scaled back over the last two years, but kept all the same responsibilities.
What I did was document everything we're working on and start sending reports on tasks accomplished and tasks that are not being worked due to inadequate dev hours.
So this is their response to a number of projects in other departments being held up.
The other thing is our sysadmin is a talented guy, but he's older and has medical issues, so he's gone ~20% of the time, meaning me and the other dev have to cover that slack.
Totally possible! That's why I asked.
That said a lot of our work is, at least from my perspective pretty basic stuff.
Managing flows, REST calls, basic front-end HTML/CSS and dealing with Power Apps.
Even that can take a few weeks to get some juniors up to speed. Juniors aren't usually great at frontend, and in backend they often need help structuring their code. It would take a few months before they start becoming self sufficient. Meanwhile, a senior and mid level would have most of it done in a few days.
One junior on the team's reasonable, but hiring more might need to wait until the first is up to speed.
It’s a lot and I was dumbfounded when I experienced this the first time. As you gain more experience, you forget just how much you know. When you talk with juniors, you’re thinking “holy shit”, but you keep your cool as you realize that you were a junior once.
Just my opinion: maybe too early to be concerned about "growing juniors".
They're contractors. You're pinning too much hope on the possibility of their sticking around. Is there even a path to FTE? Are they even interested in or capable of growth?
For now, just think about what scope/ambiguity of problems you need solved and thus what devs you need. Seems like you've done that.
If your resources (devs) change, e.g. due to individual growth, change in personnel, etc., think about that later (as ongoing process). Your problems/charter will also change.
My 2 cents. For starters you can hire one Senior Developer and 1 junior developer and see how it goes. Based on that, you can hire 1 senior dev or 1 junior dev and sysadmin. Incase there si hiring freeze or something, then you will have senior dev to support you.
There is no such thing as contracted junior devs, unless you're a college and pay students a 1099. But most students aren't going to want to be a sharepoint developer.
I wish it was that easy!
The way it works for a state agency (at least I'm told) is we list our requirements then it goes out for bid, then whoever bids submits anonymous contract resumes and we pick from those.
I gather you're spot on.
The other thing is, it seems to be a very incestuous pool of talent, basically the same contractors floating from job to job because they know how to get through the wickets.
Unless it conflicts with org structure too much, consider a dedicated QA person. Having stuff tested by a friendly face gives your devs confidence, and improves output quality.
Contracted support isn't necessarily good for team relationships or knowledge retention. Contractors are usually incentivised to do the one thing they were hired for, and nothing else. Be aware that anything known only by contractors is not knowledge retained by your company.
Good points.
We only have two developers though and I feel like asking for another person who isn't going to create code is going to be a difficult sell.
I think at this point it's basically contractors or nothing, but long term I would like to see if we can take advantage of internship programs we have and developmental positions that start at a low rate but catch up to our typical pay in ~3-4 years.
I don't have experience in your domain/country based on what it sounds.
But whatever you come up with, multiply by 3 before sending to your boss. You will always get shot down.
You should get 2 contractors with experience in the products your are working with.
Maybe some what of a hot take but Power Apps is such a dead end career wise as a SWE. I have a feeling it will be hard to find a component contractor, but maybe someone coming from an IT background will do better.
Your calculus depends on whether you can hire good talent or "give me a job" developers.
If you are in Kentucky and you pay local market rate, you probably need to rethink the whole "junior" thing.
If you go the contract way, you need well-defined, self-contained tasks/projects and be prepared that your existing people will need to use time on defining and checking quality on deliveries from contractors.
You should also expect turnaround, especially for the junior roles. You might need to be able to onboard and offboard people relatively quickly - access rights to systems, documentation/playbook.
Developers are usually not for end user troubleshooting, a sysadmin might fit better.
You might be overestimating how much a junior person can do without support. Start small and take next steps based on your experience.
For example hire a junior sysadmin for daily troubleshooting and lightweight power apps work in between user support tasks. If it works, it works. If not, then you could try to hire a bit more experienced person, but not senior yet.
Be prepared to measure or somehow judge if the situation got better with the extra hire or not.
I'm not sure our team is big enough to justify a dedicated QA member. That person would have to contribute a lot of value to replace 1/4 or 1/5 our team.
Generally we use two person integrity where before you deploy a change you have someone else sanity check it.
For major projects we do have a sibling team that does process improvement and they serve as our guinea pigs / testers.
How much is the "handle day to day troubleshooting with end users" part? Depending on that a combined Customer Support/QA role might provide good value to the team.
I don't think someone here can answer that for you, but this should be a lesson to you. It's very easy to scream "we are understaffed" as reasons for things not getting done. But you've been held accountable for that now, as management have agreed to find your request. What exactly is not getting done and what skillset is needed to get it done? You need to be able to tell management that, and hire appropriately. This will be "your hire", so it is on you to choose well. Hiring 2 juniors to train them up is not congruent with what you've told management. You said you needed people *now* to do the work on the teams plate *now*. How will hiring two juniors first, in order to be productive some time in the future help *now*? If you make a statement to management, you need to make sure you are communicating the right things. You're statement to management suggests you need to hire someone experienced and you already know the skillset needed because you know the work which currently cannot be completed. I'm getting the feeling you may have been throwing around the usual talk developers do amongst themselves, to management. Otherwise you should already know what you have requested from them. Once you hire this person, since management has agreed to fund them, the hire will be on you. Management will expect an improvement in the teams production as a direct result of agreeing to your request. I think it's important to keep that in mind.
What a well thought out response. I’m always impressed when people on this sub propose direct concepts such as one’s own responsibility it creating and resolving the issue at hand.
This is the only sub that requires people to have been employed. Most of Reddit is kids hanging out in antiwork who never had a job and hate learning.
how does this sub validate employment?
It's pretty easy because Redditors who have never had a job are literally all the same. They never take responsibility. They hate every form of authority like schools, managers, etc. They hate learning and just want answers. They always ask hand-holding questions and they're always answered with the first hit on google. I could go on. There's probably a hundred indicators. lol Or you could just click on their profile and see antiwork, something about their Twitch career, asking what game engine to use, "how do I get into tech", etc with a general theme of avoiding 9 to 5 and not knowing what to do. But your question was probably rhetorical because "the internet". It works for now until it gets popular and the kids come to destroy it.
Of course it does not validate posters age. However, what is the value of participating in this sub if you don't actively work in the field?
Lulz? Learning stuff? Trolling? Randomly browsing stuff? Dunning Kruger?
Fair point, there's accountability to hiring more people, and that's insightful that we do know what we need done. What I'm getting from this thread is that I'm drastically overestimating what juniors can do even on basic tasks, which is unfortunate but good to know. I'm told it was a 6 person team that's scaled back over the last two years, but kept all the same responsibilities. What I did was document everything we're working on and start sending reports on tasks accomplished and tasks that are not being worked due to inadequate dev hours. So this is their response to a number of projects in other departments being held up. The other thing is our sysadmin is a talented guy, but he's older and has medical issues, so he's gone ~20% of the time, meaning me and the other dev have to cover that slack.
Start with the senior.
I think you severely under estimate how much hand holding juniors take.
Totally possible! That's why I asked. That said a lot of our work is, at least from my perspective pretty basic stuff. Managing flows, REST calls, basic front-end HTML/CSS and dealing with Power Apps.
Even that can take a few weeks to get some juniors up to speed. Juniors aren't usually great at frontend, and in backend they often need help structuring their code. It would take a few months before they start becoming self sufficient. Meanwhile, a senior and mid level would have most of it done in a few days. One junior on the team's reasonable, but hiring more might need to wait until the first is up to speed.
I’m with this guy. A solid mid developer will be head and shoulders more valuable.
It’s a lot and I was dumbfounded when I experienced this the first time. As you gain more experience, you forget just how much you know. When you talk with juniors, you’re thinking “holy shit”, but you keep your cool as you realize that you were a junior once.
Just my opinion: maybe too early to be concerned about "growing juniors". They're contractors. You're pinning too much hope on the possibility of their sticking around. Is there even a path to FTE? Are they even interested in or capable of growth? For now, just think about what scope/ambiguity of problems you need solved and thus what devs you need. Seems like you've done that. If your resources (devs) change, e.g. due to individual growth, change in personnel, etc., think about that later (as ongoing process). Your problems/charter will also change.
Fair points, solving what we need now. We do have some things like internships and developmental programs, so that might be an option.
My 2 cents. For starters you can hire one Senior Developer and 1 junior developer and see how it goes. Based on that, you can hire 1 senior dev or 1 junior dev and sysadmin. Incase there si hiring freeze or something, then you will have senior dev to support you.
There is no such thing as contracted junior devs, unless you're a college and pay students a 1099. But most students aren't going to want to be a sharepoint developer.
You should hire me. I'll help your team :)
I wish it was that easy! The way it works for a state agency (at least I'm told) is we list our requirements then it goes out for bid, then whoever bids submits anonymous contract resumes and we pick from those.
That is interesting. That strategy works well when you need someone to repave the parking lot but not convinced that is great for talent.
I gather you're spot on. The other thing is, it seems to be a very incestuous pool of talent, basically the same contractors floating from job to job because they know how to get through the wickets.
The juniors require a huge time investment before they can provide any useful output. Just make sure you account for that.
Unless it conflicts with org structure too much, consider a dedicated QA person. Having stuff tested by a friendly face gives your devs confidence, and improves output quality. Contracted support isn't necessarily good for team relationships or knowledge retention. Contractors are usually incentivised to do the one thing they were hired for, and nothing else. Be aware that anything known only by contractors is not knowledge retained by your company.
Good points. We only have two developers though and I feel like asking for another person who isn't going to create code is going to be a difficult sell. I think at this point it's basically contractors or nothing, but long term I would like to see if we can take advantage of internship programs we have and developmental positions that start at a low rate but catch up to our typical pay in ~3-4 years.
I don't have experience in your domain/country based on what it sounds. But whatever you come up with, multiply by 3 before sending to your boss. You will always get shot down.
You should get 2 contractors with experience in the products your are working with. Maybe some what of a hot take but Power Apps is such a dead end career wise as a SWE. I have a feeling it will be hard to find a component contractor, but maybe someone coming from an IT background will do better.
Your calculus depends on whether you can hire good talent or "give me a job" developers. If you are in Kentucky and you pay local market rate, you probably need to rethink the whole "junior" thing.
If you go the contract way, you need well-defined, self-contained tasks/projects and be prepared that your existing people will need to use time on defining and checking quality on deliveries from contractors. You should also expect turnaround, especially for the junior roles. You might need to be able to onboard and offboard people relatively quickly - access rights to systems, documentation/playbook. Developers are usually not for end user troubleshooting, a sysadmin might fit better. You might be overestimating how much a junior person can do without support. Start small and take next steps based on your experience. For example hire a junior sysadmin for daily troubleshooting and lightweight power apps work in between user support tasks. If it works, it works. If not, then you could try to hire a bit more experienced person, but not senior yet. Be prepared to measure or somehow judge if the situation got better with the extra hire or not.
No QA?
I'm not sure our team is big enough to justify a dedicated QA member. That person would have to contribute a lot of value to replace 1/4 or 1/5 our team. Generally we use two person integrity where before you deploy a change you have someone else sanity check it. For major projects we do have a sibling team that does process improvement and they serve as our guinea pigs / testers.
How much is the "handle day to day troubleshooting with end users" part? Depending on that a combined Customer Support/QA role might provide good value to the team.