Is the market slow for Junior Developers at the moment?

coredev123

I'm a junior developer with just under a years professional php experience. I have a level 8 degree in computer science. I had to leave my first job as my company saw a slow down in business.



I'm looking for jobs at the moment on indeed, linked, glassdoor, irishjobs. There isn't an awful lot of jobs out there. I'm learning .net and Angular to add skills to my CV. But it seems very limited at the moment, unless I'm just searching incorrectly.



Terms I'm using on job sites



.net core developer

.net developer

#c developer

junior software developer

php developer

laravel developer

pinksoir

Move abroad. There's tons of jobs here in Berlin, for example. Money's the same if not better than Ireland and the cost of living is much lower. Ireland is much too small a market for developers given how many are graduating each year.

I'm sure there's similar opportunities in other big European cities. You're an EU citizen, exercise your treaty rights!

coredev123

pinksoir wrote: »

Move abroad. There's tons of jobs here in Berlin, for example. Money's the same if not better than Ireland and the cost of living is much lower. Ireland is much too small a market for developers given how many are graduating each year.

I'm sure there's similar opportunities in other big European cities. You're an EU citizen, exercise your treaty rights!

I'm happy in Dublin though. My life is here. I can't just leave with no family or friends.

pinksoir

coredev123 wrote: »

I'm happy in Dublin though. My life is here. I can't just leave with no family or friends.

I hear you, but of course you can. I'm in my 30s and about half my friends HAD to do it because the opportunities just didn't exist in Ireland. You don't need to leave forever. Work up a few years' experience and move back with in demand skills and invaluable experience to a much healthier salary. You'll be able to have savings without the insane rents of Dublin too, which is a bonus.

Don't rule it out is all I'd say.

Rubberchikken

can i just hop in to ask a question?

a 2018 graduate, hons degree software dev but no experience.
while they've gotten a few interviews, no success so far. is the lack of experience a major issue for potential employers and if it is, what or how could this be solved?

they have considered moving abroad but feel that not being fluent in a foreign language would be a serious drawback

rhis person lives and breathes software development. to see them maybe having to give up this ambition to work in the industry is a difficult thing.

Tar.Aldarion

Just a numbers game, keep applying and getting better at doing interviews from the experience of the past interviews. There's cases of people applying to hundreds of places and eventually getting one. If they are struggling at anything in the interview, ask for feedback afterwards, practice coding questions etc.

OfflerCrocGod

London.

s7ryf3925pivug

London cannot be a fun place on a graduate salary, unless you like living in boxes and very long commutes.

They keep talking about hiring juniors where I am. The only one they did hire recently had five years experience. That's not a junior developer, that's someone who's bad at negotiating.

I think it's perceived that good juniors are hard to identify. Don't see why, a whiteboard test would be particularly suitable. Things like architecture, patterns and organising code well on a larger scale are not so important, since they'd be expected to learn this.

Do something to make yourself stand out. Open source personal project would seem the way to go. Practice whiteboard type problems.

lainey_d_123

Benson Juicy Watermelon wrote: »

London cannot be a fun place on a graduate salary, unless you like living in boxes and very long commutes.

They keep talking about hiring juniors where I am. The only one they did hire recently had five years experience. That's not a junior developer, that's someone who's bad at negotiating.

I think it's perceived that good juniors are hard to identify. Don't see why, a whiteboard test would be particularly suitable. Things like architectur, patterns, and organising code well on a larger scale are not so important, since they'd be expected to learn this.

Do something to make yourself stand out. Open source personal project would seem the way to go. Practice whiteboard type problems.

I hear this a lot, but I didn't find Dublin any better. I lived in London for a few years in my twenties because I simply couldn't get anything in Dublin, and it was fine. Obviously more money would have made it more fun, but there's a lot of free stuff to do in London and all kinds of opportunities for hobbies. I don't think there are many places in Europe where a young person in their twenties can afford to live alone and not have a crappy commute.

BrokenArrows

lainey_d_123 wrote: »

I hear this a lot, but I didn't find Dublin any better. I lived in London for a few years in my twenties because I simply couldn't get anything in Dublin, and it was fine. Obviously more money would have made it more fun, but there's a lot of free stuff to do in London and all kinds of opportunities for hobbies. I don't think there are many places in Europe where a young person in their twenties can afford to live alone and not have a crappy commute.

Im assuming " in your twenties " means it was a good while ago!

Ive lived in London for the past 9 years and its dramatically more expensive now then when i first moved here.

My wife and I both earn a decent salary and I really have no idea how a single person or a couple on a lower income can survive in this city, nevermind those on minimum wage.

When i first moved here i was on 29k GBP. With that i had to house share with 6 people to make the rent manageable. 29k would be a lot higher than the standard junior would get today.

Its doable but you need to watch your bank balance. A few nights out a month would see you running low.

lainey_d_123

BrokenArrows wrote: »

Im assuming " in your twenties " means it was a good while ago!

Ive lived in London for the past 9 years and its dramatically more expensive now then when i first moved here.

My wife and I both earn a decent salary and I really have no idea how a single person or a couple on a lower income can survive in this city, nevermind those on minimum wage.

When i first moved here i was on 29k GBP. With that i had to house share with 6 people to make the rent manageable. 29k would be a lot higher than the standard junior would get today.

Its doable but you need to watch your bank balance. A few nights out a month would see you running low.

Eh, no....I'm 33. I have no idea how you had to house share with 6 people on £29K. I've never earned more than that in my life. I left in 2015 after I turned 30, and was paying £580 in bills for a pretty decent room in a nice house in north London, that being almost a third of my take-home pay, leaving me with about a grand for food, transport and everything else. Maybe you just spent too much on your social life or something? I mean, sure, you definitely have to be careful, but if you're reasonably frugal, you can still enjoy it. In many ways, I found London cheaper than Dublin because there's so much more to do for totally free in terms of cultural stuff (especially in the summer...endless local festivals and events), and even drinking is cheaper if you know where to go. I find Dublin far tougher on a low salary, to be honest.

I find a lot of people in London just have a really skewed idea of how much life costs. People on 40K + saying they're broke, then you see their idea of 'essential living costs'. A Hello Fresh box every week, Pret coffee and croissant every morning, £50-60 in drinks every Friday after work, dinner out once or twice a week.....people really seem to fritter their money away like nobody's business. It's an expensive city, yes, but absolutely nobody on 40K should be saying they feel poor.

Manach

Based on the continuous flux at work and from acquintances, the job market seems buoyant enough. As another poster truly said, it is a numbers game.

s7ryf3925pivug

lainey_d_123 wrote: »

I hear this a lot, but I didn't find Dublin any better. I lived in London for a few years in my twenties because I simply couldn't get anything in Dublin, and it was fine. Obviously more money would have made it more fun, but there's a lot of free stuff to do in London and all kinds of opportunities for hobbies. I don't think there are many places in Europe where a young person in their twenties can afford to live alone and not have a crappy commute.

I lived in Rathmines, Rathgar and Booterstown and walked/cycled to work in the city centre on sh!t young person salaries. Little whikwhilee ago but l don't think the rents are too different now. Not the most luxurious accommodation, but it was fine and I enjoyed it. Never heard anyway say London was ok without either a good salary or somewhere free to live.

But you're better off living somewhere cheaper than Dublin alright

OfflerCrocGod

I cycled and shared accommodation in London. Get a junior job in any field for a year and then start looking elsewhere for a junior in higher paying place. My company takes on grads every year, virtually zero experience but smart, trains them up and they usually leave after 2-3 years for far more money. Good luck finding a small company in Dublin that does that. Within 6 months with me and others pair programming and tutoring, giving feedback on code reviews they are as good as mid level devs for a good chunk less money. We have a 2 week training bootcamp for them as well. I can't understand why other companies don't this. The value we get is huge. I remote mentor from Dublin with slack screen share.

rainbow kirby

Random one: Manchester. Tech scene is really growing, accomodation is much cheaper than London - I moved 8 months ago from London (Python dev with 7 years experience), we're paying less for a big 3 bed in a nice area here than we were for a small 2 bed in a slightly dodgy area.

Franz Von Peppercorn

But back to advice on a junior. Get a GitHub project going. If you want an mobile job do an app , for front end job do a website.

Better yet fix something in open source projects maintained by one of the large companies. They will call you.

devlinio

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

But back to advice on a junior. Get a GitHub project going. If you want a mobile job do an app, for front end job do a website.

Better yet fix something in open source projects maintained by one of the large companies. They will call you.

I'm just finishing up a project-based course using .Net Core & Angular. Once that's done, I'll get cracking on my own project.

14ned

devlinio wrote: »

I'm just finishing up a project-based course using .Net Core & Angular. Once that's done, I'll get cracking on my own project.

I'd reemphasise Franz' suggestion to prefer contributing meaningfully to a well known open source project used by the majors rather than making your own thing.

Juniors building their own cathedrals is great and all, better than nothing, but even better is a junior who already knows how to pilot a major bugfix into trunk.

Niall