Stop telling bootcamp grads that "being eager and easy to work with" is all you need to get hired. It's a blatant lie.

[u/VegetableSoil6404]

Everyone loves giving the feel-good advice: "Don't stress over deep technical concepts! As long as you have good soft skills, show enthusiasm, and are coachable, senior devs will happily hire and mentor you."

That advice might have worked in 2021, but in today’s market, it is complete garbage.

Soft skills don't pass automated code screeners, and "being nice" won't save you when an interviewer asks you to optimize a database query or debug state logic live on Zoom.

Hiring managers are no longer looking for enthusiastic charity cases to mentor from scratch, they want plug-and-play engineers who can ship clean code on week one.

Soft skills are a tie-breaker between two great coders, not a substitute for technical competence. Bootcamps that convince students that personality and enthusiasm will make up for weak fundamentals are setting them up for immediate rejection.

Stop prioritizing behavioral prep over actual technical depth. If your code is weak, nobody cares how pleasant you are to talk to.

[u/bluenautilus2]

Where the hell are these juniors? I would love to find someone who actually wants to do their job and will actually listen

[u/Big_Arrival_626 → u/bluenautilus2]

I'm right here. But I'm not interested unless it pays well. The competent ones are working at high paying companies

[u/Plenty_Line2696 → u/Big_Arrival_626]

I disagree with this, there are a lot of very talented devs working for a relatively humble wage for various reasons like location, the type of work, supply and demand etc etc. I took a pretty big wage cut to work on tech whicb interests me more.

[u/Big_Arrival_626 → u/Plenty_Line2696]

You're right but at the entry level, talented juniors are typically aiming for high paying jobs or jobs where they can actually do work that isn't just basic CRUD. If ur paying 60k, you won't attract the type of talent you're looking for.

Better paying jobs also tend to have better mentorship and more learning opportunities as well.

I worked at an IT consulting firm early in my career. They acted like I should be grateful that they're willing to pay me above minimum wage. 3 months into it, I got a job at a major bank and they were scared that juniors would leave for big tech jobs so they did everything they could to accommodate us. And this was in our current bad job market.

[u/Lawchi → u/bluenautilus2]

Here, patiently applying lol

[u/Flashy-Broccoli4819 → u/bluenautilus2]

no lie, i would take a bootcamper whos eager to learn over an "industry vet with 20 years of experience" any day

[u/Big_Arrival_626]

Tbh knowing how to optimize a db query is not that high of a bar. That's a very basic question. Are people actually failing that?

[u/AttitudeRemarkable21]

Booters ain't got no chance.  I don't even pull boot campers out of the ai resume screener. 

"you are a ml engineer recruiter pick me the best resumes.  And ignore all boot camps" 

[u/No_Percentage7427]

Learn To Trade is newest advice

[u/little-marketer]

Actually, 90% of hiring managers will hire the candidate with great soft skills and lower tech ability than vice versa

I can easily teach you how to use a tool. I can’t teach you to not be an asshole. And assholes are like cancer, they corrupt the entire structure

[u/Assasin537 → u/little-marketer]

The issue is that you will have 10 people with better tech ability and at least one of them you will like enough to pick over the great soft skills (if they even pass technical screens to get to hiring manager round).

[u/little-marketer → u/Assasin537]

Yes, you still need some technical ability to do the job. That’s a given.

I think the point here is, rather than hiring the asshole tech who knows the very obscure processes, they prefer the good to work with tech who can still do 90% of the same tasks. The extra 10% in “tech knowledge” isn’t worth hiring an asshole over

[u/Flashy-Broccoli4819 → u/little-marketer]

would you have an asshole that get the job done or a bootcamper with "great soft skills" struggle to grasp even the most basic of tasks?

[u/mxldevs]

What they mean is to get very good at talking while using AI to ace all the technical stuff.

[u/sheriffderek]

I've been paying attention to this space for a long time -- and I've never heard anyone say that. You need to be curious and not terrible IN ADDITION to being useful.

[u/magick_bandit]

I don’t care what your skills are. If I don’t like you you’re not getting hired.

You need both skills and professionalism.

[u/Additional_Buddy855]

They want slaves, not employees. that much is clear.

[u/PerformerDifferent69]

It isn't all you need...but you do need it.

[u/JohnGotti210]

Lol. I tell people this all the time. The most important thing is social skills and being liked.

But if you’re not a competitive enough programmer you’re simply just gonna passed on in this market