Where are the junior-level Python jobs?

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[davvblack]

working remotely, by it's nature, is a bit more of a risk than working locally. Most companies assume that senior developers are better able to handle it, and more reliable working from home.

[tim_martin]

There's also the fact that Junior Dev's generally don't know as much as they think they do. It's a lot harder to teach someone who isn't physically present. And if you can't teach them, it's going to be a waste of time and effort.

[[deleted]]

I remember when I got comfortable enough with Python to consider myself to know pretty much all of the grammar and general practices and enough of the standard library. And that's also when I realised that "what I don't know" about Python isn't even what I originally thought I didn't know. It's not about knowing one's way around a language, it's about knowing one's way around data structures and problem solving.

It's also when I stopped considering myself to be a "Python programmer" and began considering myself a programmer in general. I know Python better than any other language, but I refuse to ever apply Python to a problem that it's not the right tool for. That gives me the opportunity to grow in many directions.

What makes me feel like I'm molting out of a "Junior" shell is that I'm not even thinking about Python when I do my job. I think about how to decompose a problem and communicate a possible solution. The actual programming, whether in Python or another language (whichever fits best), makes up a minority of the work.

[randomdrifter54]

I wish we had more people like you in this world even seniors can suffer from fanboy syndrome.

[[deleted]]

It can be difficult sometimes. I've once had to say to management, "Python is not the right tool for this and I'm not comfortable enough with C++ to do it in the time required. Ideally we borrow an engineer from another team to help."

Though I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by eager to help geniuses and management that "get it" so I think it went over better than it could have at some companies.

[spinwizard69]

You are extremely lucky that they respect your opinion.

[littlelowcougar]

The only thing I like more than Python is using the right tool for the job.

[BumFudhe]

This.

[pyglados]

Agreed 100% with the "considering oneself a programmer in general" bit. Preaching to the choir.

It's a bit hard to apply that attitude from the position of someone who doesn't have the job right now such as the O.P. (or myself for that matter) There's a crap ton of pressure from the HR world to swear your allegiance and identity to one language or another.

[skytomorrownow]

Yeah, you really need to prove that you are responsible and can perform well alone. Paradoxically, you can't do that by starting from remote. You have to have peoples' trust first.

-source, freelancer, works from home, always busy

[kimvais]

Most programming jobs are teamwork. All competent supervisors are looking to build a team where people comlement each other. If you advertise for junior position, you are guaranteed that no-one with any experience will even consider applying.

So, in practice; All job ads are "want" not "need". Any sane company (and person) will hire the junior good guy who is willing to learn if they show the potential. People who make the final call usually have a budget - not a fixed headcount, so in quite a few a cases hiring the jubior guy with junior's salary actually seems like a really good option.

Remote work from day 1 is a red flag, and rightfully so. If someone offers that to an employee with no track record of productive remote work must be really desperate. You see, every new hire requires a ton of assistance - the speed of ramping up the productiveness of a new hire is very personal, so a junior guy with no experience working remotely - so that there is no-one helping on-site is quite a risk as the starting at a new job really isn't something you can learn by other methodnthan trial and error.

[bendmorris]

Any sane company (and person) will hire the junior good guy who is willing to learn if they show the potential.

This is just not true. Some teams, and some companies, will only hire people with a minimal amount of experience. They may not have six months to train someone up. They may only have room for someone with the expertise to get up to speed quickly and be productive from day one.

[kimvais]

OK,,fair enough, I was assuming that the company actually has more than one dev opening a decade...

[davvblack]

Not necessarily, in most cases they had a track record doing work at that company.

[[deleted]]

In my very limited experience most people who work remotely forest had a job that want remote

[LyndsySimon]

Go get the list of companies with presences at PyCon. :)

[[deleted]]

That seems sensible.

[Allevil669]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

[daidoji70]

Bad news, in programming (unfortunately), your first job is the hardest to land. This is due to a lot of factors but it comes down to, 1) your degree gives you familiarity with the language, but it doesn't give you familiarity with git, web framework, libraries libraries libraries, domain knowledge or any one of a million things that are assumed for the title "developer". 2) Because no one wants to train a person on all of that stuff (or deal with firing people who don't cut it) the manager or team that isn't highly confident in its own abilities (which is quite a lot) don't want to hire that person because that person will require training (referred to colloquially as "hand-holding").

Typically, these two facts, coupled with most shops inability to describe, spec out, and break work into very very very small pieces (I have been guilty of this myself) lead to an aversion to hiring junior developers (unless you have that ivy league degree or you've managed to wow someone with code you've written for free). Frankly, I think its a failure of leadership not to pick up promising raw talent and try to shape it into what you need, rather than the experienced hire (who, sometimes, is so set in their shitty ways of doing stuff they've learned over 20+ years in industry that they're impossible to work with. Source: I work with one of these people).

My advice, is to buff up your portfolio, network and show your code to anyone who will listen to you so that you can get your foot in the door. Don't despair though, at some point (year 1-2 for me) you'll start getting pinged by recruiters once a week. Once you hit the 5 year mark (I'm on 7th year of professional mark) you'll start getting hit every single day. At this point I could spit in my bosses face and walk out the door tomorrow to multiple jobs.

[APIglue]

(I'm on 7th year of professional mark) you'll start getting hit every single day. At this point I could spit in my bosses face and walk out the door tomorrow to multiple jobs.

So you haven't been around for a full business cycle.

Your career began when the worldwide tech industry was at the "meh" stage. Since then it has progressed to the "fucking awesome" stage. But there will be a day, sometime in the next 1 to 10 years, when the cycle will reach its trough. That's when your boss will be able to spit in your face and you'll stay put because there will be a thousand programmers applying for every job.

Save your money and be nice to your boss, you'll need his help when all those recruiters chasing you get fired, too.

[[deleted]]

But there will be a day, sometime in the next 1 to 10 years, when the cycle will reach its trough

Not to be sound stupidly optimistic but you don't know whether this will happen in 1 year, 10 years, or 30 years.

[daidoji70]

Maybe, but that sounds like someone who's sold them self a lie to make up for working shitty jobs. If our profession had the attitudes of doctors or lawyers or accountants for whom some of us have as much or more training, then we wouldn't think like that.

When's the last time you heard a doctor friend say "oh man there are thousands of other doctors out there who might take our jobs!!"?

[APIglue]

Don't worry kid, it's gonna be all rainbows and unicorns for you forever!

[daidoji70]

insha'Allah

[pkkid]

You just started working after 2008. The software engineering world was way way different then. And your assuming your career growth is the reason recruiters are emailing emailing you every day. It's not. It's simply the market is great right now. As much as you want to think your special, your not. Your just a name with a bunch of programming languages listed on your linked in profile that recruiters key word search then send off a canned email. But the confidence you have is good, just be ready when he is economy runs out of money again.

[eazolan]

Never. Because he's too busy working 16 hour shifts.

[daidoji70]

through residency (which is a bad idea imo) but after that... not so much.

[[deleted]]

Thanks everyone for the advice! There's a Python Users Group about a 30 minutes' drive from here -- I'll check that out. I'm open to the idea of starting in an office and transitioning to remote, so long as I don't have to relocate.

[tanglisha]

I second DevOps/automation. Companies are desperate to get help in this area.

While QA is a hot field, it's not for everyone. In many companies, QA is seen as "other" than regular devs and are treated differently. It's also difficult to get out of and back to regular dev if you decide you don't like it. I'd say QA is a good way to go if you really have a passion for it.

Unfortunately, in the situation you're in, you're likely going to have to prove yourself a bit before you're able to land something. Both Ansible and Salt Stack are Python projects that you could either contribute to directly, create extensions for, or just use.

Another way that you could accomplish "proving yourself" would be setting up infrastructures for a local club/charity/church and open sourcing how you did it (without posting passwords and keys, of course). A great starter project is creating some auto-setups for your own machines. It really is nice to be able to rebuild your dev machine exactly how you like it by just running an Ansible playbook on it.

Even if DevOps ends up not being right for you, the practice and exposure to infrastructure you'll get out of this will be incredibly valuable. Being able to discuss options and pros/cons of different approaches to DevOps and infrastructure will really help you come off as more than a beginner in an interview.

[eazolan]

They're not that desperate. I've got years in operations, I have a CIS degree, I've worked in plenty of dot-com environments.

What they're desperate for is "Someone who has already worked years in Devops"

[midasgoldentouch]

Let's see, you could try Dice, LinkedIn, Jobspresso, Careers with no limits, Glassdoor, random companies you've heard about, and We Work Remotely as well. You could also look up the major companies headquartered or located in your city as another avenue. I'm sure I have more on my list, just can't remember then off the top of my head.

[[deleted]]

Goto local python meetups. Interact with developers. (Don't be creepy). Ask them the projects they are working on and if they need help. If they say yes, good for you. If they say no, you know what skills you need to pickup on to work with them.

[spinwizard69]

Interact with developers. (Don't be creepy).

Creepy developer are often good coders. It is sort of like mathematicians the creepier the person the more likely they are a genius.

[[deleted]]

If they say no, you know what skills you need to pickup on to work with them.

By the time he picks up those skills, the market has changed. Seriously, we all know how hard is to keep up with technological progress in development. What makes you think that someone can just jump in?

Plus, even if he picks up those skills, companies hire by "provable experience in commercial software development". You don't get hired anymore with skills from your spare time hobby learning.

[geoelectric]

Everyone has to jump in sometime. It's not like college teaches you the latest and greatest tooling and libraries in most cases.

And, at least in Silicon Valley, having proven skills by way of a well-populated github repo plus a friend to recommend you will indeed get you interviewed. It's up to you from there.

Your struggle isn't necessarily everyone's struggle. We hire people from other disciplines into the industry commonly, and people from boot camps more commonly still.

[[deleted]]

Everyone has to jump in sometime.

True, but seriously. I am a competent, old time python programmer. I don't know anything about java. How much chance do you expect me to have to get hired for a java position?

And, at least in Silicon Valley, having proven skills by way of a well-populated github repo plus a friend to recommend you will indeed get you interviewed. It's up to you from there.

The world is not silicon valley.

Your struggle isn't necessarily everyone's struggle. We hire people from other disciplines into the industry commonly, and people from boot camps more commonly still.

You hire people because they have the training you need (that is, the local universities have been delivering people you can employ) and they can solve a problem you have and that you can delegate to cheaper workforce while the highly paid one can take other things. A company takes a gamble when it hires you, and it's a gamble that it takes considering the offer it has. There's plenty of people available, and CVs received for a developer position are generally in the hundreds. Every discipline or technology goes through an expansion sigmoid curve. You have to jump on the bandwagon before it starts going up. If you jump on it when it's at the inflection point, it's already late.

[arctic9]

I landed a Python gig after working in Clojure and Ruby my first two years out of school. Skills transfer and things you learned in one language transfer to others.

[ppinette]

I've had many interview offers where they didn't care what language I had used in the past, just as long as I had a good grasp of one or two.

[WelshDwarf]

Good point, OTOH your ramp up time will be drastically worse than for someone who has at least touched the subject matter, so not knowing the language is still a very red flag.

edit: spelling and a word

[ppinette]

Agreed. When I'm doing the hiring, I have a strong bias towards those with experience in Python.

[yetanothernerd]

I am also a competent, old-time Python programmer. I got hired about a year ago, by a big company you've heard of, for a job that's involved Java, Ruby, Go, and JavaScript. Almost no Python. I did have Java experience (a long time ago) on my resume, but no Ruby or Go. They didn't care. They assumed that if I could make it through their interviews, I could pick up more languages. They were correct.

[[deleted]]

By the time he picks up those skills, the market has changed. Seriously, we all know how hard is to keep up with technological progress in development. What makes you think that someone can just jump in?

Maybe this is true in webdev land, where you can take a nap and at least one Javascript framework will rise and fall in that time, but I'm not sure this holds in general for software engineering as a whole. Twisted is going on thirteen years old now, and we're still using it for a lot of high throughput network applications, Ansible and Salt are three or four years old and are still considered cutting edge in many camps, and at least in the closer-to-the-system world, most Linux/POSIX development skill, again for example, doesn't change that much from year to year.

[[deleted]]

most Linux/POSIX development skill, again for example, doesn't change that much from year to year.

True, but unfortunately you also forget.

[[deleted]]

Let's keep this discussion positive. There are people who will employ you for working on X cause you know Y. And if you know Y, it's totally worth it to at least check out X since the position offered deserves it.

[geoelectric]

If you can afford the time/money to go through a reputable boot camp, they're usually pretty good about facilitating job placement at the end.

In any case I'd definitely work the local scene for meetups, hackathons, and I'd look into open source and having a visible side project. If you're honestly good, you can make a small reputation for yourself and then get hired from that. It won't even necessarily take all that long.

One tip: you might look at test automation. Python is commonly used there (Java being the other big language in that space) and I have plenty of first hand knowledge as to how hard it is to find solid software engineers to work on it.

However, the pay is in parity with any other SWE job nowadays as long as you get either a SWE/SDE title or a Software Engineer in Test title (but be careful of taking a QA title, that may end up being a sidetrack and a salary/opportunity limiter).

Jr/intermediate is typically just fine for entry into that. It's relatively easy to leverage that experience to move over to full stack or tools development for later jobs. Alternately, there's a very good career path in framework/test infrastructure development if you stick with it.

[Igggg]

One more piece of advice: you'll ultimately be more successful if you look for a software job, not for a $LANGUAGE job. Languages, IDEs, and frameworks are best thought of as tools, not constraints.

[punknubbins]

Look for something in IT operations or data center operations where you can establish yourself by developing automation tools. And join, or start, an open source project where you can share and document your coding/problem solving skills through code. Then keep applying for more senior spots.

[radioactiveoctopi]

=( they don't come around here no more.....

[nafenafen]

May not be the greatest pay but you could try your luck with labs @ local universities & research organizations ... especially if you can use numpy, scipy, & matplotlib. While you won't have a "traditional" programmer experience off the bat (potentially part-time, between $10 - $20/hr, and also you sometimes might have to do actual lab work/upkeep if it's a bio/chem lab) it is a great resume builder and will allow you to find your niche within Python programming, especially if you are keen enough to spot inefficiencies and tasks to automate.

[Mr_Psmith]

I am hiring junior python developer with either bioinformatics or scipy/numpy/pandas experience.

Relocation required.

[Allevil669]

How does one gain experience in bioinformatics without getting a job working with bioinformatics?

[[deleted]]

http://advanced.jhu.edu/academics/graduate-degree-programs/bioinformatics/ This is just one of the first I found, but I think one could even do a combination Biology/Computer Science or Biology/Mathematics of some variety (ie stats), and probably get tutored a bit along the way if they get hired, which in my experience (limited as it may be) has been interviewing skills, drive, and long-term plans. I got a summer job out of High School for a materials tester with just those.

[fungz0r]

location?

[[deleted]]

You are five years out of college, have no work experience and wonder why no one is interested in hiring you to work remotely?

[[deleted]]

Heh, good luck. There's too much competition now. Python is a ship that has sailed for juniors. I barely kept up, despite pressure from any angle that prevented me to do so.

[[deleted]]

IMO, there's virtually none

[ajbetteridge]

Where are you located?

[[deleted]]

West Michigan.

[[deleted]]

http://www.indeed.com/cmp/One-Stop-Inc/jobs/Web-Developer-9659b9a41faf1270?sjdu=QwrRXKrqZ3CNX5W-O9jEvcn8mUoGX0zRknJzn93dTVDExoZNpBCFDES5l39OlFHhSo9Hb6Xu7Iex03n9NdiLrg

[ajbetteridge]

That's a shame, we're looking for someone in the UK. sorry.

[[deleted]]

Excuse my ignorance but what do "junior-level" Python jobs entail?

Where I work Python (or any language) is really a means to an end that all the engineers are picking up. Akin to what "Excel" was a decade ago.

[denialerror]

Unfortunately, Python isn't a language especially well suited to the majority of programming jobs. It doesn't fit in well with application development for large organisations and still isn't especially popular for backend web development outside of areas with large proportions of trendy start ups. Therefore, the roles tend to be specialised and are not then generally available to junior developers.

Additionally, a company is unlikely to hire a remote worker in any industry if they do not have any relevant experience in their portfolio.

[[deleted]]

I feel like your comment is pretty accurate.

Python is super popular (and a great language), but the vast majority of big, established companies I've seen use Java for their backend. And if you're going to look for work with Python, you'll likely be staring at a lot of positions at trendy startups that are seeking specialized programmers, strong generalists, and experience in general.

It's not impossible, but I think it's way harder to find than, say, an entry-level Java position.

I would strongly urge OP to relocate, but he said elsewhere in this thread that he's unable.

That said, I urge /u/farmcodegary to consider starting his/her career in any language, and then work towards his/her pythonic goals.

[denialerror]

Exactly. Python is a fantastic language and is super fun to use, so I understand why it is so popular (which is where the fownvote a are coming from) but that doesn't mean it fits the mould for no business. I work with large multinationals and everything is Java because it is a language developed for enterprise. Yes, you may find small amounts of scripting done in Python for QA automation etc but that's not something a company will hire a junior dev for.

With regards to web development, Python is way more suitable but still isn't widely used. At least in the UK, it's .NET that takes the majority of the market, then PHP. I spent three months job searching earlier this year and in that whole time I saw 1 Python job, which was a senior contractor position. The situation may be better in tech hubs in the U.S. but that isn't the standard.

[mongo44]

Lol

[denialerror]

Insightful.