digitalclubb

I've been mentoring a graduate who applied to over 400 roles and got very little feedback, which pushed me to look more closely at what's happening at the entry level.

It seems like a combination of factors. Fewer junior roles, more experienced engineers in the market and teams getting more productive, which reduces the need for entry level hiring.

The part I find more interesting is the longer term effect. If fewer people can get into the industry now, the pipeline that produces senior engineers over time gets thinner.

Curious whether others are seeing similar patterns.

The web is getting bigger, there is no denying that. People developing responsive sites irresponsibly, adding large images, videos and JavaScript libraries and frameworks.

What I don't understand is why search engines don't punish those individuals with larger pages rather than move everyone to something new? Is this taking us back to the mobile site days?

I love the concept of getting core content to the user fast but what is stopping someone adding a 2MB amp-img to their page and then we are right back where we were before?

I think that's a fair assessment. If people can grasp creating small independent deliverables for their projects (of any size) then things become a lot easier to estimate. Monitor velocity and pull less into future sprints if you're still getting it wrong.

If there is a piece of functionality that brings unfamiliarity to the delivery team then create a spike ticket to investigate (though use them sparingly).

If you break things down small enough, really understand your velocity and have a transparent relationship with your product owner then there should be no need for any stress from anyone.

If you're a designer looking for work, befriend a handful of good quality developers and likewise - if you're a developer, make friends with the odd designer or two. You will find very quickly that if they have client work, need your expertise and you're their go to person then you won't be short of work.

Angular and Backbone applications aside, doesn’t this just boil down to bad development and lack of understanding?

I’m a firm believer that the web should be usable with JavaScript disabled, JavaScript is there to add a layer of interactivity to your web page, not core function. All those people that keep coming up to me quoting ‘but everyone has JavaScript enabled’ miss the point - the web needs to be accessible and JavaScript isn't the answer.