Excellent presentation Joe. I really wanted to be a Rails dev when I was in college. I eventually changed paths because I just couldn't find any junior opportunities.
I did have one company offer me a Rails internship abroad but they wanted me to skip a semester to work for them and I just couldn't do that.
It's quite sad how many companies only want "senior" devs. This isn't isolated to Rails by any means. I put senior in quotes because they're often times only considering years of experience and not at all capable of measuring actual skill level.
Thank you! It was a blast being in LA for such an exciting event. We even went to a Star Wars themed bar for a drink after the first day.
And I couldn't agree more. What' even crazier is that folks don't even _need_ senior developers. They just think they do because they don't have the infrastructure in place to level up folks less experienced.
Until employers realize they have to give a little back to the employee (outside of compensation) we are going to be in a hard spot.
> They just think they do because they don't have the infrastructure in place
My experience is management is often so weak they can't write a few points on a slide of how to onboard and grow a junior dev. So everybody is senior and unwilling to expose areas where they may be weak.
I did have one company offer me a Rails internship abroad but they wanted me to skip a semester to work for them and I just couldn't do that.
It's quite sad how many companies only want "senior" devs. This isn't isolated to Rails by any means. I put senior in quotes because they're often times only considering years of experience and not at all capable of measuring actual skill level.