So the engineering managers at your company are preparing to staff teams for the months ahead. You see all the work that's expected of you, and wow, there's a lot to do.
As an engineering manager, you want to set your team up for success. Naturally, you advocate for hiring experienced engineers, so you have the highest chance to deliver on expectations.
But what if I told you hiring an early-career engineer would be your best bet? Early-career engineers, sometimes called "L1s," will have little to no experience, but they can be a more productive addition to your team than a seasoned engineer. Here's why.
New engineers keep you honest
If your instinct is to think that an L1 couldn't be productive on your team because you own a pretty intricate and complicated part of the infrastructure, here's another way of looking at it: if your code is so complicated (or convoluted) that an L1 would struggle to provide any value, maybe you're getting a bit too clever with your implementations.
If someone told me their codebase was so complicated that it would be impossible for an early-career engineer to contribute effectively, I wouldn't think it was an indictment of the engineer. I'd think it was an indictment of the team. Part of the responsibility of an experienced engineer is to continue to refine a project so that it's more elegant, simple, and easy to understand over time—not more obtuse.
Here are a few common problems in engineering organizations:
Onboarding instructions that have holes in them and can't be followed note-for-note to get a dev environment working properly.
Unclear team processes where expectations aren't effectively set and met.
Obtuse customization of tech, where it's used in such a way that it's hard to relate back to the documentation, making it difficult to understand. Examples include complicated next.config.js setups with tons of plugins and extra fluff or infinitely complex Redux state management handlers.
Code that requires context to be effective within it (and where that context isn't relayed through thoughtful comments and repo READMEs).
Having an L1 on board and engaged keeps everyone from overcomplicating things, which eliminates an entire realm of technical debt possibilities.
You want your team to complete more work, right? So make your codebase easier to understand. Early-career engineers help you keep this goal in mind and can point out when you're not living up to it.
Early-career engineers provide mentoring opportunities
At Zapier, we value growth across the company. So if you're an engineer looking to grow in your career and eventually get promoted, our internal documentation suggests demonstrating that you're influential on your team through mentorship. I'm sure most companies have similar requirements—and who are people supposed to mentor if there aren't any early-career engineers?
Hiring an L1 now improves the growth opportunities for other engineers in your organization: they can practice and hone their mentorship abilities, and potentially grow into a new role themselves. It's a win for everyone involved.
On the other side of mentorship...
L1 engineers grow into L2s that already have institutional knowledge
There's some level of knowledge that someone needs to have before they're comfortable contributing at Zapier, and I'm sure that's true at most companies. For any project, there's a lot of context to gain, and you simply won't get it all after a week, a month, or in some cases even longer. I honestly feel like I didn't contribute a ton of value at Zapier until six months into my time here, and I started as an L3.
You know what, though? People who start as L1s will gain that context early. So when it's time for that L1 to get promoted, they already come equipped with that knowledge and context to be immediately impactful in their role. Early-career engineers who grow into their role will be able to hit the ground running when they reach higher levels.
So imagine you're that engineering manager looking to staff your team for all the upcoming work you have the next few months. Would you want to hire an L2 with all the institutional knowledge necessary for the role—someone who could contribute on day 1? Or would you prefer to hire an L3 that may need a few months to get their sea legs? I would pick that L2 every time. So you promote from within and backfill the L1 role.
Hiring from other parts of your company gives an engineering team new perspective
At Zapier, we have a Path Into Engineering program, which gives folks outside of engineering—from the support or marketing team, for example—the opportunity to switch careers and become a software engineer. I think this is the coolest. I can't say I've ever been a part of a company before that formally created this type of opportunity. It tears down some of the (much-maligned) barriers to entry that exist in the tech industry right now.
Why do we do this? Here's a quick summary:
Creating more opportunities for personal growth helps Zapier retain employees, and helps the employees achieve their goals.
Bringing folks from areas like customer support into our part of the org gives all of us such fresh perspectives on what our customers want. Our Customer Champions, as we call them, are undoubtedly the most plugged in to our customers' needs.
At the moment, our Path Into Engineering only has two openings per cohort. It makes sense: we have to make sure that once someone completes PIE, we have a job opening waiting for them at the end of it. Now imagine if we had more L1 job openings available—we'd be able to ramp up the program so that it was available to more people.
That's part of why I wrote this article, which started as an internal blog post. I'd like to see opportunities like this expand, so that Zapier—and other companies like it—can benefit from everything that early-career engineers have to offer. I'd also like more people to have the chance to work as an engineer: it's an incredible job, but it's hard to break into if there's no such thing as an entry-level position. (You can check the math on that if you want, but I'm pretty sure it's airtight.)
You should hire more early-career engineers
If you're an Engineering Manager, I hope this article resonates with you, and I want you to consider this the next time you evaluate your staffing needs. Open up an L1 position (in addition to any other needs you have). The right recruiter will find a determined and talented engineer to fill this role and blow your expectations out of the water.
If you're an individual contributor, though, you still have a role to play. Talk to your Engineering Manager and discuss how you can open up a position for an L1—feel free to steal any of my ideas to support your case.
Remember: you're not just investing in one person's career. You're investing in your team, by creating this fertile ground for someone to thrive in. If an early-career engineer can thrive, just think about the success the rest of the team will have.
