In the last 3 months, I've interviewed 134 engineers, from students to CTOs (including Soham Parekh!). Through this process, I've discovered something counterintuitive: there's massive alpha in hiring junior engineers that big companies are completely missing.

While everyone else is fighting over senior talent and driving up salaries, there's an untapped pool of exceptional junior engineers that most companies won't even consider. The market has overcorrected so hard against junior hiring that smart companies can gain a significant competitive advantage by going the other direction.

The Current Landscape: Why Companies Avoid Junior Talent

Engineering teams have overcorrected away from junior talent in a big way. During COVID, remote mentoring failed spectacularly for most companies. Engineering leaders watched their junior hires struggle without proper guidance, saw productivity plummet, and witnessed promising engineers leave frustrated and undertrained.

The result is that engineering leaders are now gun-shy about investing in junior engineers. The long-term ROI isn't immediately obvious, especially when you're under pressure to ship features quickly. It's much easier to hire someone with 4+ years of experience who can contribute from day one, even if their ceiling isn't as high as a motivated junior engineer.

This dynamic has created a vicious cycle. CS programs continue churning out graduates who can't get their foot in the door anywhere, creating a massive pool of untapped talent. These engineers often give up on software development entirely or take roles far below their potential, while companies complain about talent shortages and pay premium rates for senior engineers.

The irony is that many of these "experienced" hires aren't actually that much more productive than a well-mentored junior engineer, but they cost 2-3x more and often have less room for growth.

What Big Companies Are Missing

Big companies are making several critical mistakes when it comes to junior talent:

They're hiring for yesterday's skills. Junior engineers today are AI-native. They've learned to code in a world where AI assistance is normal, so they have no legacy patterns to unlearn. Meanwhile, senior engineers often resist AI tools or use them ineffectively because they're comfortable with their existing workflows.

They're using outdated evaluation criteria. Most technical interviews still focus on algorithm memorization and whiteboard coding. These skills were important when engineers spent most of their time implementing well-known patterns, but they're less relevant when AI can handle routine coding tasks.

They're operating on old assumptions about onboarding time. Companies assume junior engineers need 6-12 months to become productive, but AI-savvy juniors can get up to speed much faster. They can use AI to understand codebases, generate boilerplate code, and learn new technologies at an accelerated pace.

They don't know where to find exceptional junior talent. The biggest blind spot is sourcing. Most companies recruit from the same places and miss the hidden gems. A perfect example: engineers who applied to Y Combinator but didn't get in. These are often impressive people with genuine entrepreneurial drive who got caught in what can be a coin flip selection process.

How to Find the Right Junior Engineers

The key is asking the right questions and knowing what to look for. Here's the process that's worked for us:

Ask about projects they've built, then drill deeper. Don't just ask what they built. Ask "Why did you build this?" and "How does that work?" Keep drilling down until you hit the bottom of their knowledge. This reveals the depth of their understanding and whether they can think through complex problems.

Look for passion and curiosity. You want the ones who light up when talking about their projects. They should be able to explain their technical decisions and show genuine excitement about the problems they've solved. These conversations should be energizing for both of you.

Watch out for red flags. The ones who get defensive when you ask follow-up questions or can't explain their work past the surface level are probably just chasing a tech salary. They're not worth your time, regardless of their technical skills.

Test their learning ability. Give them a small technical challenge they've never seen before and watch how they approach it. The best junior engineers are comfortable admitting what they don't know and systematically figuring out solutions.

The goal isn't to find junior engineers who already know everything. It's to find the ones who can learn quickly, think clearly, and solve problems effectively.

Why This Strategy Makes Sense Long-Term

While everyone else is zigging toward senior-heavy teams, you can zag and build a competitive advantage.

Market timing is perfect. Right now, you can get access to exceptional junior talent while the market is artificially suppressing their value. This won't last forever. Eventually, other companies will figure out what you're doing and start competing for the same talent.

In-person mentoring is back. Remote work killed effective junior engineer mentoring for most companies, but in-person work is making a comeback. This means you can actually invest in junior engineers and see the results. No more remote onboarding struggles that burned everyone out during COVID.

AI amplifies good mentoring. Junior engineers can use AI to accelerate their learning, but they still need human guidance to develop good judgment and understand complex systems. When you combine effective in-person mentoring with AI-native engineers, you get incredibly fast skill development.

You're building for the future. The greatest engineering teams in the next decade will be those who build strong in-person connections and leverage AI effectively. Junior engineers who are passionate about solving problems and comfortable with AI tools are exactly what you need.

The Compounding Returns

Investing in junior engineers creates compounding returns that most companies don't account for:

Loyalty and culture. Engineers who you train from the beginning tend to stay longer and become strong culture carriers. They understand your systems deeply and can mentor the next generation of junior engineers.

Higher ceiling. A motivated junior engineer often has more upside than a senior engineer who's already hit their stride. You're getting someone at the beginning of their growth curve rather than the middle or end.

Cost efficiency. Even accounting for mentoring time, junior engineers are significantly more cost-effective than senior engineers. The salary difference alone can fund substantial mentoring efforts.

Fresh perspectives. Junior engineers haven't been trained to think "that's just how we do things." They'll question assumptions and suggest improvements that more experienced engineers might miss.

Making It Work

The key to successful junior hiring is having the right systems in place:

Invest in mentoring infrastructure. This means pairing junior engineers with experienced mentors, creating clear learning paths, and building processes that support rapid skill development.

Start small and iterate. Don't hire 10 junior engineers at once. Start with 1-2 and learn what works before scaling up.

Measure the right metrics. Track how quickly junior engineers become productive, their retention rates, and their long-term career progression. This data will help you refine your approach and justify the investment to stakeholders.

Be patient with short-term productivity. Junior engineers will be less productive initially, but the long-term payoff is worth it if you hire the right people and invest in proper mentoring.

The Bottom Line

Most companies are making a mistake by avoiding junior talent entirely. They're missing out on AI-native engineers who can learn quickly, adapt to new tools, and grow into exceptional senior engineers.

The market inefficiency won't last forever. Smart companies that figure out how to hire and develop junior engineers effectively will build incredible teams while their competitors fight over the same pool of expensive senior talent.

Investing your time in passionate junior developers will pay off in the long run. The question is whether you'll start now or wait until everyone else figures it out