This post is for those of you who hire developers, and also junior developers who want to be hired. Let’s talk about how developers are just like individual stocks in the stock market. Time for a little role-playing: you’re now a stock market investor.

As a financial advisor, your company has given you $2,000,000 USD to invest in the stock market. It’s made very clear that the future of the company depends on the return on investment (herein called ROI) – “gains” – that your investments bring to the company. Your decisions will have a major impact on the company’s future. Given that kind of pressure, what’s your investment strategy for success? Begin by reviewing the kinds of stocks available to invest in.

Let’s Review Some Stocks

You take a look at stock #1. It has been on the market for a decade, has nearly consistently yielded high returns (with references you can investigate and check into), and is very reputable. Putting a good chunk of your money here is probably a reasonable call, since this stock is vetted and has historically provided value over time. It’s unlikely to suddenly drop to no value, and if you see it going south you can bail out before you lose it all.

Stock #2 is the interesting one. It’s brand new to the market. You can find no history on it, no performance trends, no reputation, nothing. It’s a total wildcard that has a reasonably low price tag – about 1/3 of stock #1. Its value could skyrocket resulting in incredible ROI. However, it could also end up being a dud, resulting in losing it all. You have little information to go on: this stock is truly a gamble. Do you invest heavily in it?

Given the two options above, what’s the smart move? In general, putting all of your money into a single thing is very risky, so you’re likely to diversify your portfolio a bit. It doesn’t make a ton of sense to invest heavily into stock #2 because it’s a major gamble, but there’s some room for potential and it might pay off. So why not put 80% into different stocks that fit the archetype of stock #1 and the other 20% in stocks that fit #2’s profile? That would make for a smart investment with some near-guaranteed returns, including some investment into gambles with high potential.

Stocks On Market == Devs On Market

Stock #1 is a senior developer with a proven track record and solid reputation. Stock #2 is a junior developer.

Hiring nothing but juniors is a recipe for high volatility and potential disaster, for reasons that become obvious when given the stock market analogy above. Hiring nothing but seniors is one way to get reasonable gains, however you miss out on significant potential to hire an incredible up-and-coming junior if you never hire any at all. A good strategy incorporates both, with seniors afforded time to mentor the juniors and develop their skills.

Getting Hired As A Junior

As a junior developer, the less artifacts that you can point to and show to companies, the more of a risk you are for them to take. You can mitigate some of this risk with a good interview, but if that interview doesn’t include coding tests which you ace then it might not be enough to get you in the door.

A junior should strive to create artifacts that reduce the risk of hiring them. These could take virtually any format, and given that everybody is different and we are not all afforded the same privileges and opportunities, one should strive to create artifacts that suit their situation. Single parent with 2 children and little free time? Put a few hours each week into an open source project (or contribute to other open source projects). You’ll be amazed how quickly that adds up. Unemployed with tons of free time? Create a project that shows off your skills and stretches your knowledge, which in turn causes you to learn. Struggling with the whole “I need a job to get the experience to get a job” thing? I’ve been there myself, and while my situation was surely not identical to yours, I found that investing some time into reading books and writing small applications to demonstrate my skills did wonders for potential employers.

The point is that all developers are going to sell themselves as hard as they can to a potential employer. To an employer, they may all look similar. Do what you can to stand out and reduce uncertainty by creating evidence of your potential and abilities, and show that to them instead. Talk is cheap, action speaks louder than words.