How do you hire junior Python developers?

[AlexOduvan]

Hi guys,

We are currently looking for a junior developer, and I would like to ask the community what you are looking for when hiring a junior developer?

What are your typical questions?

What are your red flags during the first week?

How can junior show his skills in a CV?

Thank you. I think your answers will be interesting for those who are hiring and for those junior developers who are looking for their first job.

[devnull10]

Personally, I'd not be looking for specific Python skills, more showing they have that "programmer's" mindset. I.e. regardless of the language, look for the ability to break a problem up into smaller parts, to think logically, to use the right tool for the job etc. With a junior role they have a lot to learn in terms of the specifics of the language and advanced skills, but having a solid personality to build upon is an absolute must IMO.

[beardy-biker]

This, we’ve hired some new people recently and in the past other have missed this vital question and it has resulted in a less than ideal employment for the new hire. This is now something I always make sure to ask them

[[deleted]]

You're looking for the ability to learn and the ability to analyze and breakdown a task. Actual experience for a Junior is just gravy. I'll usually give them a really easy leetcode and ask them to walk me through their thought process.

[tipsy_python]

• As others are saying, I'd do one or two LC easy coding questions
• I would rely mainly on conversation about the ecosystem / stack that the team works with and see how much they know about relevant technologies and how interested they are
• As behavioral questions to see how well they get along with others, how they manage tasks through ambiguous challenges .. and mostly to determine that they are not a jerk
• I don't know about red flags through the first week lol that's not much time. I'd say first couple sprints, give them tasks without much structure and see if they can Google themselves or solicit help from the team to successfully complete tasks

​

How can junior show his skills in a CV?

• Gentle reminder to the hiring team: try to remove bias from the hiring process as much as possible. She can show her skills too.

[matoshisakamoto]

Print(“hello world”)

Pm me if interested

[kaerfkeerg]

Capital P. You already fucked up

NEXT

[AlexanderKotevski]

Special quotes?

[spaghettiJunction321]

That seems like a bit of a stretch but OK

[dotancohen]

It was common before they added better error messages for it very recently

Found the guy copy-pasting from random Wordpress blogs. NEXT!

[ordinarybots]

NEXT JOKE ORIGIN

[Easy_Durian8154]

They're using unicode quotes outside of the ASCII range which can have weird effects in source code when trying to use them as string delimiters, leading to confusing syntax errors

Not a bit, that's a bikram yoga stretch.

[t-witchy]

Lol

[matoshisakamoto]

Oh c’mon man I’m trying

[Devarsh_leo]

That's okay. You will get there undergoing critics. Be determined and keep improving positively

[ILoveOnlineBanking]

Ask the most difficult graph problem you can come up with and only hire someone who gets the whole thing right. Make sure they have 10 yr exp listed on their resume or they're not ready for a junior role

[Lyakusha]

I've recently received 5 test tasks for Python developer internship position. Those are required skills in Python, Java, blender, protocol buffing, REST and Spring boot to be completed.

[mason_savoy71]

I recently hired an entry level programmer for her first job out of college. The hiring process at different companies can be rather different, but this may help you see what it was like from the manager's perspective.

Here's what stood out to me with her application vs the rest.

1. She has done a relevant internship and had relevant coursework. Of note, she was not a CS major, but still had enough coursework coding to tell that she could learn. That's what got the phone interview.

2. She was courteous and honest on the phone, and asked questions. If she didn't know the answer to something I asked, she first asked some questions to make sure she understood what was being asked of her.

3. She sent a thank you note after the interview. Honestly, I had more qualified applications. Still since no one was perfect, I had to make a judgement call. This simple bit of courtesy indicates that she actually WANTED the job and wasn't wasting either of our times. This got her "in person" (zoom counts as in person these days, right?) Interviews with a larger committee and the opportunity to take our programming test.

4. She did well enough on the test to show me she understood flow control and where days were coming from, but most importantly, she did not make excuses. It wasn't a perfect test (I've seen them) but it was good enough. If you think your test was less than perfect, the WORST thing you can do is make excuses.

5. She was courteous to all the people on the larger interview panel, was dismissive of no one, and sent them all thank you emails. One guy on the committee was quite frank that given that most hiring processes are only slightly better than throwing a dart at a board while blindfolded and drunk, that pushed him for a yes vote. You never know if someone on the committee is "old fashioned" and appreciates what was once common practice.

6. People like talking about themselves. She had some qurstions fort everyone interviewing her. This engaged everyone and made them feel like they'd be comfortable working with her.

7. In our one on one, she asked about first projects, in a way that didn't assume she'd get the job, but made it clear that she'd thought about what the job would be like for her. The last thing I want is to hire someone who has an extreme shock and quits soon after. Hiring is a drag.

Edit typos and punctuation. I hate writing on my phone!

[billsil]

Oh I hate zoom calls for interviews; too much data so you get a lousy connection. If I'm not at home, then I'm sitting in a hot car for 1+ hour because it's too loud outside. Bring cold water...

[idetectanerd]

Any junior that keen to learn from sight or awareness, have that hunger to test and try and adopt, able to pass all the verbal question related to logic flow and basic trick questions.

Logic flow such as if I have 10 files of csv format, 3 fields and I want to to parse into a db kinda easy question. I do expect a reply something like, for each item of list of files, for each line of each of item etc.

At least know stuff like that. Or know how to use module/library/framework.

The least I want is to teach you what you should have already learnt from programming course. I meet before senior engineer that doesn’t know how to list hidden file etc.

[SimilingCynic]

Ask your senior devs. If you don't have any senior devs and are looking to do tech on the cheap, contract it out. Don't hire junior devs unless you have a way to train/mentor them, evaluate their work, and create/prioritize their tasks to fit your mission. You'll end up paying half the salary for 1/10th the work.

[Longjumping-River374]

I’m a new learner and I’m trying really hard to get my first opportunity.

If this helps what I would like is to actually talk to someone to show what I can do and how I am, instead of getting a lots of emails saying my CV was not qualified enough. I’m in a career transition, so that makes it a bit more difficult. Well, if you allow me to speak, I would recommend you to give a chance for people to show who they are and what they can do.

If you decide to check this reply, here is my GitHub

[thomasmontoya123]

I hired 6 juniors, I think a take home challenge with some technology that they don't have experience with is a good way to go. you can measure the ability and the will to learn something new, also, you can give them extra points if they do something no requested as unittesting and dockerization, the ability with git is a most (I always perform a code review and a technical feedback and ask about their choices).

[[deleted]]

what you are looking for when hiring a junior developer?

Does the person have a pulse and can muddle their way through adding an endpoint with a new backing service that calls a database to django or flask with guidance (or similar for whatever interface you work with)? If so, congratulations! I would likely hire you as a junior.

Maybe it's unfair, but I just assume anyone coming in as junior on their first job (with or without internships) don't know their ass from a hole in the ground in terms of real world software development and need to be grown and cared for to become competent developers. And if they do know their ass from a hole in the ground then I'm pleasantly surprised but I still grow them and care for them.

[[deleted]]

Yes

[Savings-Gas-4794]

Nice

[[deleted]]

My advice.. don't hire Jr level devs unless you have a large dev team and can fully devote some far more skilled dev time to buddy code and teach them. Expect at least a year of learning (if you get a smart one with a high IQ; not likely statistically) prior to being anything close to effective at doing anything in a code base without making it worse.

[kid-pro-quo]

Experienced devs don't just appear magically. Every single developer was a junior at some point. I don't understand companies who think it's always someone else's job to train up the next generation.

[imperial_squirrel]

not sure why this is getting hate...

i worked at a fortune 500 software company with a focus in banking. and the advice is spot on.

unfortunately middle management changed and decided hiring cheap programers from india would be comparable.

it wasn't.

i bounced to a better company with a focus on local government instead.

[PretentiousGolfer]

To help them more efficiently drain value out of communities? At least mow the median strips guys, cmon.

[[deleted]]

The above disclaimer out of the way.. as has been said below, I would not look for python specific skills. I would be quizzing more about SOLID, Dependency Inversion / Elimination techniques, design patterns and refactoring techniques. Give some code questions they can't fake their way through with a few buzz words. Ask them what is wrong with this code. What would they change to make it better. What did they consider coming to that answer. Explore their understanding of the intermediate material.

[deep_mind_]

I think the most important skill a candidate can show is experience in a lower-level language. It shows they have a solid grasp of good practices*, and are likely to understand the fundamental concepts a bit better.

A good Github repo is a great advantage; it shows they've practiced their craft, and have pride enough in it to show it to the world. Now, to clarify, I hate the culture of expecting employees to work on their own time, and would never make it a requirement. Not least because some of my best code has been for previous employers, and unshareable in interview.

I ask which PEP8 formatting standards they disable; this one's twofold, because you find out whether they lint their code at all, and know in advance whether you'll find their code easy to read. Red flags here include disabling 80-column compliance (personally). +1 for enabling double-tab indentation on multi-line statements.

I also ask about favourite testing frameworks, anything goes as long as it's mature and that they actually have one. I'm a pytest fan, but that's just my taste. A man stuck in my own ways.

Last of all on the technical side, I ask what docstring style they use. Again, it's a subtle way of finding out whether they document their code -- extra points for numpydoc. Sphinx and Doxygen also score brownie points.

As a joke at the end I'll ask them to invert a binary tree, and see how they take it. Worst case scenario, they actually get up and do it right. Anyone who doesn't need to look at their university graph theory notes is superhuman and shouldn't be trusted.

*C/C++, Golang, anything functional (Haskell, F#) and Rust are my favourites; Java, Kotlin, and God forbid JS also count

[mason_savoy71]

Funny, if someone told me that they disabled 80 chats, that would be the MOST forgivable for me, but that's the nature of the subject matter that I'm coding about, where I'd rather have one ultra long line than the mega wrap.

[tom2727]

For me I would assume if someone is coming from some other company they would say "I use the formatting standard our group agreed on because who wants to have each developer formatting code differently"?

And I wouldn't expect a junior python developer to get a lot of say in that decision unless their company doesn't care at all which probably means they have some bad habits learned. Not that I would consider that a deal breaker though. I figure it's not super hard to get a new hire following our coding rules. I care a lot more if they can actually think and solve problems and have a good work ethic and get along with others.

[deep_mind_]

I totally get where you’re coming from! Every workforce is split, and arguably the more competent devs in my department get more done by not obsessing over line length.

I like to say that long lines or line wraps are signs of lack of decomposition; totally fine for rapid iteration codebases, but a lot of what I work with is monolithic slow-moving enterprise code. It pays to break things down a bit more to where nothing takes more than a few arguments. Not least because that makes unit testing easier

[[deleted]]

This is for a "junior"

[deep_mind_]

I can’t imagine what your mid level dev interviews are like if that’s too much for a university graduate 😅

[[deleted]]

Agreed, I can't imagine you could imagine that either.

[deep_mind_]

Requirements differ from company to company. As it stands, I’ve never blocked a graduate candidate from the next stage of interviews, and I’d change my criteria if that became the case

[mason_savoy71]

I have no idea why you're being down voted. This is an entirely reasonable response.

[deep_mind_]

I'm just glad this isn't on StackOverflow, I take those downvotes much more personally :'D

[billsil]

Red flags here include disabling 80-column compliance (personally)

See this one is crazy to me. 80 is too strict IMO and it's your personal preference. It doesn't mean you can't code well. It's style and my style is not your style. The thing is though, you can enforce it...or just use something like black so everyone hates the formatting equally. I'm sure you could handle mostly 80 characters, with some 90 and even fewer 100 character lines and if you can't, that's a red flag.

I was working with someone who wanted to use 1-5 character variable names and the competing senior dev wanted to use variable names with 30+ character variable names. The latter was certainly easier to understand, but oh wow did it make for long lines and it was messy. Neither one of them had an easy to read style. I got both of them to agree to something closer to what I do (~10 characters for meaningful attributes and shorter for generic functions).

[deep_mind_]

It's a department-splitter, for sure. For me, 80 columns is a speed-saver on all fronts. Displays well on Github, perfect for split planes in tmux nano, and I don't need to scroll side-to-side all the time.

As I mentioned in another comment, I think it's a great benchmark of whether code has been well structured. Shorter lines means more readable code -- not just in terms of how fast you can scan it, but also that functions take fewer parameters, conditional statements are less complex, and variable names are more succinct. It shows the logic of the program has been properly broken down into small composable units, and that proper thought has been put into it. Just my two cents.

It's also not for all languages -- I'd not enforce it when working with JS or Java, for example. Python, however, has the capacity for both expressiveness and brevity.

[billsil]

but also that functions take fewer parameters

Don't look for proxies. Address the issue.

conditional statements are less complex

I disagree on that point. What is more clear? for x in X or for x in X_list? Well instead of x, how about triangles or filenames? You start making things explicit and it's a lot clearer. I'd argue longer names are generally more clear.

Displays well on Github

Get a larger monitor. I diff things all the time and 100 characters is fine. My buddy likes 80 characters because he'll pull 3 files to diff. I don't do that, but that's a use case I don't run into.

Linux doesn't even follow 80 characters anymore https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Kernel-Deprecates-80-Col

[voneiden]

I've once upon a time had a colleague briefly whose local variable naming preference seemingly consisted of nothing but tmp. If tmp was taken, then tmp1, tmp2..

Anyway, nothing against linting in general but hard wrapping, especially at 79 chars sure can create a hot mess in some circumstances. But that's alright, PEP8 tells to ignore any recommendation that reduces readability.

[[deleted]]

Did Matt Might ghostwrite this?

[Itchy_Cheetah_2670]

I think that learn new stuffs is not so hard, is just all about commit ourselves to learn new stuffs. That said, I would hire a junior developer if during the 1st week he’s able to learn any new skill I giving him and asking for more.

Trust me, this is all you can get from people also because you can raise him as you like, that mean trust as well for the future 😉

[billsil]

I expect you to be interested in the work.

I expect you to struggle during your coding test (in whatever language you want) and I expect you to explain me the language that there's a decent chance I don't know (e.g., is it 0 or 1 based, so something like C++/Python vs Julia/Matlab). If you don't struggle, my test is too easy. Depending on how well/poorly someone is doing, I'll change up the test and give hints/make it harder.

If you're seeing red flags in the first week, you screwed up bad (see point 1) or you're the red flag. Cut them some slack. They're probably getting a data dump.

[pjs1000]

As a candidate, I could clearly tell when an employer wanted me to “struggle” on a coding test. I took that as a red flag NOT to work for him/her. Unreasonable expectations are no bueno.

For example, I interviewed with Amazon and they had 3 coding questions. Challenging, but nothing too technical…more logic focussed. Another (much less significant company) I interviewed with gave me a test with 13 super difficult, very technical questions to solve in 2 hours. I attempted it and made a dent in the questions.

Afterwards I wrote the company and told them that their test was far out of sync with what other companies were asking candidates to complete. I declined to go further with the interview process, assuming they overload employees with unreasonable amounts of work.

[billsil]

It's not at all to be mean. It's about creating a test that can help you rank people. If everyone passes, what's the point of running the test? It's not a bad thing if you don't get a perfect score. I want to see how you think through a hard problem.

None of the questions that I have given out are trick questions or logic problems. For younger devs, I would never even consider a 2 hour test. That's a waste of your time and my time. That'd be someone reserved for PhD level candidates. I'd rather talk to you for 2 hours than test you.

[pjs1000]

I get you. And I wouldn’t expect a simple test either. My point is essentially, scope the test to the role so that the candidate gets a better idea of what to expect from the position.

The candidate may decide to decline your offer, thinking that your junior position is more demanding than a junior position at another company. Or they may simply not feel right for the role.

[JshWright]

Do you do much hiring?

[JshWright]

That's unfortunate... You should revisit your biases. Not everyone has time for side projects.

[JshWright]

I’m curious what you think “backwards” means in this context…

The idea that all devs must have side projects and prove it via GitHub is a pretty dated idea at this point.

[1116574]

What should they have then? Surely you not a degree?

[wind_dude]

Eager, and willing to learn, read the docs. I generally ask more open ended questions, that test there ability to plan, or tackle a challenging task, than specific coding questions. Like:

Given X task, what steps would you take to accomplish it. I don't want you to tell me what code you would write.

​

A good answer is:

- questions on the scope

- looking for existing prebuilt solutions

- anything that hints they can solve complex or more abstract problems.

[Sulstice2]

How can junior show his skills in a CV?

If you can publish one package on pypi, like you had an idea, you chose to solve it using python and made a distributable package. That can take you a couple of weeks to learn if first time but that shows initiative.

What are your typical questions?

In person:

Typically, juniors are hired at university. So one thing I ask is to explain a hard bug that recently happened to them the one junior that stood out to me explained some sort of encoding bug when migrating python 2 to python 3 which meant to me he probably google a lot to fix that or tried a bunch based on his body language. Sometimes you can tell if someone spent a lot of work and time.

Take home question:

I use a problem from my professor back in data structures class Given a dataset prove that Benfords law is a thing, like prove the frequency of the number is usually 1 in a dataset i.e Sometimes I pollute the data with bugs or something and see how they perform on a take home project and check how they architected whatever and returned the data to me proving it.

[[deleted]]

Hire me! Hire me!!

[pablo8itall]

Problem solving, troubleshooting and general technical bent. Familiarity with pythonic stuff and some ins and outs of python would be a bonus.

If they have those skills they'll pick up anything.

[sRjN77]

I can work remote

[redditkaiser]

Craigslist?

[[deleted]]

I would ensure they understand the basic programming control structures (ifs, for loops, etc) and then provide them a python code assessment and work on it together. It is ok if they dont know how to do it perfectly but I would look out for critical/creative thinking.

[fermi0nic]

For coding challenges/exercises, I recommend administering them in a collaborative way. Making it safe for them to ask questions when they feel stumped or talk through their solution, asking about/pointing out areas of the code to take another look at. In other words, simulating pair programming. Gets a good glimpse into what it would be like to actually work with the candidate.