What are the top skills that a Junior Developer should have?
Answers (5)
Leonid L
Software Engineer at Linedata Services
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"Junior" developer is just another name for "fresh out of school". Every junior developer should aim to become a senior developer. Once they reach that plateau, they can move on to management, project management, or stick with the IT route - team leader, principal, architect, ...
Junior developers need to have good grades, recommendations, and ANY experience possible - whether internships, undergraduate research, open source development, web development, etc.
Their resumes better look professional (many fresh graduates have no idea how to write them).
Solid previous answer, I have a point from my experience....
The ability to question and/or challenge. Sometimes companies want someone who won't just blindly follow instructions, but maybe come up with new innovative ideas that could improve something. Someone who wants to improve something will add value to a company.
There is a fine line to being a pain and being difficult, it needs to be remembered that even if you are right, once you have put your point across and used examples/logic to explain the reasoning, if your boss tells you to do it his way then it might be an idea to do as you are told ;o)
Of course certain roles will require you to simply do as you are instructed, it is by no means easy to differentiate but recruiters/job specs should give a good idea.
I think a junior developer will advance much faster if they take the time to obtain a Microsoft certification and, depending on which area of development they intend on pursuring, Cisco and/or 3 Com certifications are very useful.
College only provides a broad approach to a subject, while a certification obtained from a company such as Microsoft really drills down and teaches a person what they need to know about a subject.
Ramesh K
CTO
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1. understand what is told to him/her
2. Think like an user
3. Code as required.
4. Maintain the coding standards
And dont do something that is not told, unless it is cleared!
Ramesh
The Human Search Engine
At Openplaces we specifically seek out developers right out of school. What do we look for? Smarts! We try to hire from the top 2% of a graduating class.
As my boss likes to say, programmers are like composers--there's no limit to how good they can be. The sky is the limit, given the right environment.
