DonTheDeveloper Podcast
DonTheDeveloper Podcast
5 Red Flags of Junior Devs That Say "Don’t Hire Me!"
In this, I break down five major mistakes that can instantly sabotage any junior developer’s chances of landing a real coding job. I’ll talk about how inconsistent coding habits, half-finished side projects, and a questionable online presence are some of the biggest turn-offs for hiring managers, along with one or two surprises you might not expect. If you’re serious about becoming a software developer, you’ll want to hear about these red flags so you can sidestep them and stand out from the crowd. This isn’t about shaming newbies. This is about leveling up and showing recruiters and hiring teams you’re serious.
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If you are an aspiring junior developer and you are trying to break into the industry, I'm going to talk about five red flags that I would really try to avoid. If you're trying to button up and polish your presentation towards or what, if you are an aspiring junior developer and you are trying to button up and polish your presentation to employers or potential employers, I'm going to talk about five red flags that can hold you back, that are probably going to turn a lot of employers off. So please take these seriously. If you're doing any of these things, fix it. So we're going to start off with the very first one. Barely any code committed right. Most of your journey of learning to code is going to be building projects. You should be committing those to something like GitHub. If there's nothing really committed or there's a lot of your activity is very infrequent, where you're going several weeks over and over and over, there's a pattern Several weeks, potentially a month or two where you're taking breaks of coding and then you come back. You're like software engineers know. You're not really growing doing that. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of consistency. And if there is a pattern of a lot of breaks where you are infrequently coding and trying to grow as a developer, that's a big red flag. You're probably at a very surface level. You really need to spend a tremendous amount of time digging deep and building a solid foundation and reinforcing it through a ton of project work, and you could even commit some coding challenges of things that you're working on.
Don Hansen:But the idea is to get comfortable with git, get comfortable with committing to github. Just create an automatic habit of it. Push your stuff up because, remember, with github you can organize the projects you want to highlight. But seeing a profile with a ton of valid activity is usually a pretty good sign. Of course, it's not going to be the one thing employers look at, but if your activity feed is close to nothing and you're showing that you really aren't investing a lot of time into this and you're not being consistent, employers know that you're not that good. That's just the reality of things. And this is where, even if you're doing like tutorial based projects and stuff like that a lot of courses, a lot of tutorials encourage you to commit it to github, to push that code to github, to show that you are making progress, at least with something you are trying every single week. You are making significant progress and you are pushing forward for months and potentially years. Right, this activity builds up and it builds you into the good developer that you need to be to be hired. So be careful about taking long breaks, especially when it becomes a habit. It becomes a pattern. It usually is just a red flag for employers. So, number two, if you are committing, it's also a very common thing and I did this, by the way, I did this myself it's a common thing to create a graveyard of unfinished projects. Now, I love when developers will get curious and they will kind of explore and they'll build a little project, or maybe they'll build something to reinforce the concepts that they're learning. That is freaking awesome. Those projects that don't really turn into much, they're kind of just meant as learning tools, those are useful, those are fine to keep.
Don Hansen:On your GitHub profile Again, you can showcase the projects that are complex enough, that are your portfolio projects that you're proud to show an employer that they create real value, the real fleshed out, professional looking projects that you might even continue iterating on, but they you had an end date potentially. But you had an end date potentially where you said I am going to fill all of these requirements. This is what this app is supposed to do. I'm going to build it and I can call it finished. I can continue making it even better. That is an option. But I made it a point to create requirements up front. Create requirements up front, and I said I am not going to stop with this project until I finish the MVP, the minimum viable product, the minimum it takes for that project to go live and provide value to real people.
Don Hansen:You can have a bunch of unfinished projects if they're learning tools, but if your pinned projects on your profile are unfinished projects, you know they're sloppy, you know the code is crap, you know it was supposed to turn into something else and you just gave up on it. Those are very, very unimpressive projects and, holy shit, does that show a lack of follow through? There are going to be projects that you work on as a professional developer that you are going to be so sick and tired of. I just want to be done with this. Our teams are arguing we just like the requirements are changing. I have to keep pushing back over and over. We are not even going to get a lot of users for this.
Don Hansen:You can come up with all these excuses in your head, you just hate the project. Whatever the excuse is, whatever the reason is, you fucking hate that project and you finish it anyways. That's part of being a developer. And when you have a graveyard of unfinished portfolio projects where you know you're capable of a lot more, you know it's unfinished. It's clear to other people that view it that it's unfinished. What do you think that signals? Do you really think an employer wants to hire someone that has no follow-through? Of course they don't. It takes grit, it takes a grind to finish this stuff. And if you are creating a bad habit of jumping from project to project because you are getting bored or you lose confidence and you don't, instead of like overcoming that challenge, you run away from it and jump into a new project. That's a red flag.
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Don Hansen:There's another type of profile that shows a variety of small projects. They're finished, but they're small. They're tiny, they don't really solve any complex problems and they certainly don't require you to really thoroughly understand complex implementations that can showcase your foundational knowledge and can showcase your growth as a software engineer, but the problems that you're solving are so small. It's not really challenging you in that way and it's not showing employers that you can solve these more complex problems. If you are just building a variety of projects, you're not really diving deep enough to grow as a software engineer, them gaining more of a foundational and more foundational knowledge sometimes a breadth of knowledge, but certainly a depth of knowledge in their area and they take ownership of that app. They know that chunk of code better than anyone else on the team and they take that ownership. You don't have that opportunity to tackle complex problems when you just build a bunch of basic CRUD applications or really small tools that don't require a lot of complex implementation. They don't really require you to even think about how you're going to organize the app because you don't have a lot of files, you don't have a lot of components, you don't have a lot of routes.
Don Hansen:Do you really think that's going to showcase your depth of knowledge, which most junior developers lack, and employers know that you really think your small, your ton of small, your variety of projects showcase what you can truly do on a team? Absolutely not. It's surface level stuff. So many developers get rejected in the interview process because they just have surface level knowledge and when you just work on a variety of small projects, that is a red flag. You are probably one of those developers that just has surface level knowledge. And, man, as an employer, I'd be so tired of going through those same candidates eventually finding out that they really haven't dove that deep. So that's a red flag. I'd be very careful about that and to combat that. I've talked about this in my past video.
Don Hansen:Work on a capstone project something that requires months, potentially a year plus, to build and flush out and gain users and reiterate, man, that project, you're going to be in the top 5% of developers working on a project that complex. Going to be in the top 5% of developers working on a project that complex. Most junior developers do not have the follow through to do something like that. Really, focus on a capstone. You'd have a variety of projects but have that one single project that continues to grow in complexity. It looks like a professional portfolio project. You present it as such and you talk about the users that use it. You talk about the real value that it provides, and hell if you put a pricing model around it. You talk about the revenue that you've gained from it, right, and if you're not gaining revenue from it, you can track usage statistics. Google Analytics is great for some basic statistics like that, but, man, the variety of small projects I really think hurts a lot of junior developers. But we're going to get out of the technical realm right now.
Don Hansen:Let's talk about your social media presence. If you are trying to land a developer job, shut the fuck up with politics. Just shut the fuck up with politics. Just shut the fuck up. Please, for the love of God, shut the fuck up. Stop with the controversial issues. Stop showing the world that when you are trying to become a professional, you act like someone who has no control over their emotion and gets involved and gets baited and gets dragged into controversial conversations, especially if you're a shit poster, especially if you're petty with it. Now you're doing your own thing. I shit post. There are a lot of people that shit post and there are a few people that get away with it while working for professional companies. I'm not working for anyone. I'm good, I'm chilling, I shitpost. But if you are trying to be professional, come on.
Don Hansen:That always have to inject like they always have to have a strong opinion about something controversial. They have to inject politics into the workplace. No one wants to work with people like that. No one does. No company wants to deal with people like that. It almost always ends up in unnecessary drama. Sometimes people quit. Sometimes the company's own workers will shit on the company because they don't back up a certain issue.
Don Hansen:Like, if you're trying to look like a professional, just stop getting involved in that conversation online, even if you tend to present yourself in a fairly wholesome manner, companies generally are kind of going to look at that like, hmm, is this person going to bring drama into the workplace? Like, is this going to turn into something? A lot of companies are looking to just completely toss candidates that show any sort of risk in hiring. Don't give them that excuse. Get a burner account. Listen, like I said, I shitpost, I troll. I wouldn't do this if I was applying to companies. But if you want to hide your identity, hide your identity and shitpost I troll. I wouldn't do this if I was applying to companies. But if you want to hide your identity, hide your identity and shitpost I think I don't think there's anything wrong with shitposting. Just understand like we have to have some common sense here. If we are looking like a professional, stay the fuck out of a lot of controversial, uh, social issues or or you take a chance talking like that and you really try to link up with a company that is very politically or socially motivated and you can use that, but generally the better and safer idea is just to stay out of those issues with your public profiles. Now, that's with controversial issues.
Don Hansen:But also being a developer is about dropping your ego. It's about being able to take feedback and not get defensive. It's about working with other people, with other developers, in a very constructive manner, wanting to lift them up, not tear them down. You're not making fun of them or giving them shit because they didn't know something. Companies want to hire developers that lift others up and that's how you want to be seen. And if you have to fake it, then you fake it for a little while and you just give compliments.
Don Hansen:I don't think you have to brown nose a bunch of people, but I do think there is value in at least transforming your interaction in society, in the world world, to at least lifting some people up that you feel deserve it. And if you feel like no one deserves it, I like that's a personality thing. You got to work through that, because there are a lot of cool connections, a lot of meaningful connections. You could build a lot of relationships you could build in the dev industry if you just treated them kindly and you wanted to help them out, just like they'll eventually want to help you out. Like, being a developer in the industry is about building each other up and being humble enough to let others build them up as well. It's very synchronous like that. It's the teams work so well. When you get a team of developers that are constantly, I don't think you have to be completely selfless, but you are, you're being empathetic works so well. When you get a team of developers that are constantly, I don't think you have to be completely selfless, but you are, you're being empathetic, you are.
Don Hansen:You have positive intentions for wanting to turn everyone into a better version of themselves, even if it's just by interacting with you, because you're always kind and you're always constructive and you're always trying to point out even some of the positive things in them. Like you could just walk into a room and you could, within like 10 minutes of people talking, you can feel out who are the likable people, who you just feel good to be around, because they make you feel good. That's the type of developer that you want to strive to be. I don't think you're going to be perfect with it and there are all sorts of personality types that might make that a little bit difficult for you, but like it's something you should strive to be, because the dev industry and a lot of good developers that have a lot of relationships within the dev industry know that we are like technology is a fucking awesome thing that empowers a hell of a lot of people and for those that actually want to get involved with it, that want to grow as a software engineer, like we want those people in tech. We want them in tech. We want to lift them up because it just makes everyone better. That's the mindset to have.
Don Hansen:So I'm not saying your social media interactions are going to reflect that purely. I think we all have bad days and I think you know we all get agitated at times and it's easy to let people online trigger us. I do get that. But you also have to show that you have some emotional control, that you are a positive force in the tech industry. But going back to the emotional control, like you're someone that when people disagree with you or even kind of like bait you a little bit, or they're passive, aggressive. You don't lose your shit, right, and I'm really stressing this. I'm talking about this a lot because I see a lot of junior developers that don't. They're not there. The soft skills just aren't there, and soft skills take a long time to build up.
Don Hansen:Take a week after you post something. If you think something is controversial or it looks bad. Take a week. Look back at your previous week's post and if you were an employer or if you were even someone that wanted to get to know you as a friend, would you want to talk to you? Would this person be likable? Would you want to be in the same room? Do you think that other person would lift you up? If the answer is no, then you need to go back and really think about how you engage with people online, because that's where, like I'm telling you, a lot of companies most companies are going to look through your social media, especially any public profiles, and if you just don't know how to talk to people, you don't have the soft skills. There are a lot of people who do, who will be chosen over you. Soft skills are important. I think I've touched on this enough, but it is really important and this is something that so many junior developers struggle with, surprisingly.
Don Hansen:And the fifth red flag is dishonesty. It's a little period where some, a few people very small minority of people were getting away with just being just lying and flat out saying oh yeah, I was a developer at this company when it was a personal project. Um, that hiring managers are so trained to spot that now a lot of hiring managers are so tired of hiring junior developers who have been dishonest, who have lied. It's expensive to fire them, it's expensive to replace them. Hiring managers are fucking done with it. I'm telling you, dishonesty and a lack of integrity is one of the biggest red flags that you can put out there.
Don Hansen:You can build your skills up, you can work on your soft skills, but if you can't even showcase that you have integrity and morals, that third thing takes a long time to build up and most people never do. A lot of people just get set in their ways and their habits and their values, especially as you get older, and just expect that employer to never think that you're going to grow up and change and never think that you're going to grow up and change If you can't even be honest with what you're building, what you're working on. Be humble enough to showcase that you are still learning this technology and that's okay. You don't have to come off like an expert with it when you literally just watched a course and built one small project with it, like, no, this is a cool technology and I got like five more projects under my belt before I even want to talk about it. I cool technology and I got like five more projects under my belt before I even want to talk about it.
Don Hansen:I don't think you have to wait to talk about it, but I think a lot of junior developers think they have to come off like an expert. Right, companies want to hire experts that know everything. No, companies want to hire passionate software engineers who give a shit about their craft. They have integrity, their honesty, because if you don't even have that integrity and honesty, you're not going to have the real conversation you need to have with yourself that you have a tremendous amount of room to grow. You suck at this technology. You have a shitty foundation. You're not able to solve complex problems, yet you are fucking up a lot of coding challenges. You have so much more room to grow and if you can't even be honest and have integrity, why the fuck should any employer trust that you are going to actually take ownership of this and grow as a software engineer? I wouldn't't trust you. Would you trust you? So I really want you to think about that.
Don Hansen:That last one really hurts a lot of people. There are junior developers getting hired that are humble enough to admit when they don't know a technology, when they still have a ton of room to grow. That's the strength of junior developers. You are hungry to grow. You like this thing. You you have that fire in you that some senior engineers have extinguished in themselves, and you were humble enough to accept feedback and grow. You don't come in with a bunch of bad habits. It's a fresh slate and some of you have this idea that you have to act like a senior engineer, be this expert that knows everything, with no humility.
Don Hansen:How do you think that goes for most people that do that? You've lost the one advantage you have as a junior developer the one advantage by lying and being dishonest and showing that you're not really willing to grow. Lying and being dishonest and showing that you're not really willing to grow man, it sucks to see so many junior developers doing that and when I say so many, I still do think it's more of a minority that does this, but there's a lot of junior developers doing this. That's it. Those are the red flags. Now there are a lot of other red flags and I am happy to dive into those. So if you want me to dive into more red flags things to watch out for definitely let me know in the comments. But, as always, I love to read your comments and I'll see you next time.