While searching for a new position in the Information Technology section of a careers website, I came across a vacancy for a Junior Software Developer.
Perhaps you think this is cute, but it’s inappropriate and diminishes the professionalism of anyone who has graduated with an information technology degree or qualification.
Junior is not an appropriate or respectful role title for anyone with a Bachelors degree in Information Technology or Engineering from an Australian university. Anyone worth their salt will not apply for this job.
This is one of the reasons there is a skills shortage in Australia for AI software developers, researchers and business leaders, cybersecurity specialists, marketing automation specialists, robotics engineers (software), site reliability, customer success specialists, data scientists, data engineers, growth managers and strategy managers.
Did you know there are plenty of exciting career opportunities in the fields of artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, virtual reality, cybersecurity, big data, robotics and bots?
When will Human Resource Managers, Mayors and Chief Executive Officers learn the value of an Information Technology degree?
Perhaps ‘Junior Software Developer’ is an appropriate job title for an internship or a recent graduate who has some programming skills but no practical experience. Why not call it a Graduate Software Developer or a Graduate Web Developer?
Perhaps you think your job advertisement will dazzle us with a fancy professionally made video, and you’ll promise good pay and conditions summarised neatly in a bullet list. Something along these lines:
- A wellness program – that just means you can call a psychologist to vent and the company will foot the bill, or you can take sick leave.
- Generous superannuation – a standard government requirement (yawn)
- Flexible work arrangements – it’s 2020 and I can work from home, but I need to log all of my hours in a stupid spreadsheet….. because you don’t trust me? And I can have a lunch break so I can rest my brain from coding for 3 hours straight?
- Career training and development (yawn, I’d rather be gaming or writing)
- Salary packaging (boring)
This is one of the many reasons why ICT graduates will move to England, America or Asia where they will get paid what they are worth.
When will managers and human resources personnel learn that it is very difficult to program and code all day and night? Who do you think the doctors and surgeons call at midnight when they forget their passwords and their technology doesn’t work? Or when they back up all their clients’ personal and private data to the cloud and they lose all of it because they didn’t invest in the right encryption software.
The job position title of Junior Software Developer is not the right fit for anyone in my industry. This one needs to go straight to a graveyard.
Background Research
ACS Australia’s Digital Pulse 2019 Booming today, but how can we sustain digital workforce growth? Prepared by Deloitte Access Economics for the Australian Computer Society.
https://www2.deloitte.com/au/en/pages/economics/articles/australias-digital-pulse.html
