What Would You Choose: 1 Senior Dev or 2 Juniors?
A Manager's Dilemma on structuring and balancing a team
Hey, fellow Leader 🚀,
I am Artur, and welcome to my weekly newsletter. I am focusing on topics like Project Management, Innovation, Leadership, and a bit of Entrepreneurship. I am always open to suggestions for new topics. Feel free to reach out to me and share my newsletter if it helps you in any way.
This is probably one of the most famous and hot discussions on setting up a new team. In a perfect world, the team would be composed of senior members alone, but Sandra (a fictitious character) from the finance department has a different opinion. So, this question is tackled every time we need to ask for funds for our new project, and a team structure should be presented.
Of course, in a world where the truth is located somewhere in the gray area, it's up to the manager to make a decision based on project complexity, available funds, and other aspects that could impact the project's feasibility.
Dispelling Some Myths
While having this conversation, we often oversimplify the argument, as if the money we'd spend on one senior could pay for two juniors. The truth is never a straight answer because it can vary widely depending on technology, geography, contract type, and other aspects that could influence the price. Even if we managed to have equal parameters for this comparison, we'd find cases where two juniors would be a more expensive option than hiring one senior. However, in some other contexts, avoiding hiring a senior could allow for hiring three or four fresh new people from university, ready to prove themselves.
Also, a senior isn't a magic wand for productivity. It's not like John from the C# team, with 20 years of experience, can work twice as fast as Peter, who just finished university. Nowadays, we live in a strange world where Peter with AI could outperform John. It's very challenging to compare apples to apples nowadays, and therefore, it's important to understand constraints and opportunities for a good decision.
Identifying the Project Drive
What's important for the sponsor? Mafalda from the Marketing Department, who is sponsoring a brand new application, has some points and considerations about the project’s budget:
Is the deadline more important than the budget spent?
Are funds short with a reduced margin for failure or overspending?
Is Mafalda asking to balance the deadlines with the budget constraints?
Many deadline-driven projects tend to be more generous with the budget. If Mafalda is paying for a system that needs to be ready before Christmas, she understands that she would need to sponsor a more risk-averse structure, despite her words of caution regarding budgeting. In this case, the team could be designed to hold a higher percentage of senior developers.
If the budget is a problem, and overspending is a challenge, probably the magic needs to happen by betting on more medior and junior profiles. However, the risks of not meeting the deadlines should also be addressed, and different strategies for mitigation should be found.
Geography Changes Everything
If the company is working in a remote setting, this could be a game-changing strategy for Mafalda, Peter, and John. Geography can ease some budget constraints with the price of team consolidation struggles and international travel. Depending on the company headquarters, a senior consultant who might cost 1000 Arturians (fictitious currency) per day could cost half, or even a third, in a different geographic location.
However, the honeypot of budget-saving gold isn't within reach of all companies, due to the need for a proper remote structure. Mafalda, who used to drink coffee with Peter every now and then, to get firsthand updates on the project, will now need to chat on Slack or Teams about how things are progressing. Informal communication morphs into a political and highly calculated communication strategy. In some cases, highly different cultures need to work together without a basic understanding of each other’s cultural constraints and characteristics.
Seniors Devs Are Not Babysitters
A common misconception while designing teams is to bet heavily on junior profiles, expecting the senior developer to pick up the slack. Unfortunately, things don’t work that way. A senior dev’s time should be spent on project execution, first and foremost. It's understandable that a senior dev should help their colleagues and is expected to do so. The problem arises when there's 1 senior dev to 4 or 5 junior devs. This concentration will hurt the project and will trigger a resignation from the project expert.
It's important to balance the team load, as well as to follow up on junior profiles. Sometimes, hiring a dev around 8 years of experience, despite being a bit more expensive, would be more beneficial to the project and the senior dev’s peace of mind than hiring a more junior dev.
The Secret Sauce
Identifying how the project’s budget is structured and its flexibility towards milestones and funding is paramount, as is understanding the level of risks and complexity for the project deliverables.
Reusing the company’s framework and modus operandi is better than adopting a revolution, like hiring developers in Eastern European countries when the headquarters are on the opposite side of the continent and have no experience with remote working or a proper follow-up structure.
Have quotes from different providers to understand the market value for each profile the project needs.
Perform a calculated budget exercise where management would be comfortable with the risks and budget allocation, while avoiding the polarization of the number of seniors or juniors on the team.
Hiring new team members is always risky. We don’t know if the experts we found on paper and in several technical interviews will turn out to be a good fit. Balance the risk with potential good juniors, and some folks with a little more experience could help mitigate casting error risks.
There is no straight answer between 1 senior or 2 juniors. There are too many variables to take into consideration.
That’s it. If you find this post useful, please share it with your friends or colleagues who might be interested in this topic. If you would like to see a different angle, suggest it in the comments or send me a message.
Cheers,
Artur