Why you should hire juniors and how to onboard them into your tech team

[03:07] Welcome and Introduction

Andrew Murphy: Everybody and welcome to another Tech Leaders Launchpad Livestream. I'm Andrew Murphy, a technology leadership trainer and coach. These are the livestreams where I share with you the people I learn from. I became a technology leader about 15 years ago. When I started, there were no resources, no one to help me, no books, no web, no livestreams to tell me how to be a better technology leader. So I spent the past 15 years learning to be better. My mission now is to make sure you don't have to do that the hard way. You can learn and get better by the things that exist out there, and I'm here to share them with you.

One of the biggest things I share are the people that I learn from—my mentors and coaches. Today, I have with me Clare Sudbery. Welcome to the livestream, Clare.

Clare Sudbery: Hello, Andrew! Thank you for having me here.

Andrew Murphy: You're very, very welcome.

[04:04] Clare’s Role as a Technical Coach

Andrew Murphy: Clare, you're a tech coach. Do you want to tell me a little bit about what that means?

Clare Sudbery: Yeah. So I'm a technical coach, which means that I work directly with software engineering teams (specifically developers) to help them improve their software engineering skills. I spend time with them, working on their codebases, looking at skills like test driven development, refactoring, continuous integration, and more. It’s hands-on and meaningful, giving teams a real chance to practice what they're learning.

Andrew Murphy: I like that a lot of training out there focuses only on knowledge, but we don’t just want to know something—we want to do something different. Practicing and exercising is how we move from knowing something different to doing something different.

Clare Sudbery: Yes, absolutely, I agree.

[05:02] Icebreaker: Favorite Tech Gadget (Not a Computer!)

Andrew Murphy: So I've got my icebreaker question, Clare—what's your favorite gadget that is not your computer?

Clare Sudbery: I thought about this and I chose my little over-the-ear headphones. They're smaller than my hand, fold up cleverly, and go around the back of my head over the top of my ear. I don't like the in-ear ones—they fall out, or just feel uncomfortable for me. But these are perfect. Unfortunately, I don't know who made them or where I bought them. I've tried looking for replacements but I don't think they make them anymore. They're probably going to fall apart pretty soon, but I do like them.

Andrew Murphy: That's a shame. It's always tough when you find the perfect product and they stop making it.

Clare Sudbery: Yes, it's really annoying.

[06:17] Today's Topic: Hiring and Onboarding Juniors

Andrew Murphy: So, we're here today to talk about hiring juniors, onboarding them into your team, and making sure it's a great experience for them and the rest of the team. For those joining live, you have the opportunity to ask Clare your questions—please do so in LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitch… wherever you're watching. We’ll get to as many as we can. I've got some questions for Clare, but my main goal is to help the audience, so please ask your questions!

To kick things off, Clare, tell me quickly—how did you get into this job? What's your journey to becoming a technical coach?

[07:07] Clare’s Career Journey: From Software Engineer to Technical Coach

Clare Sudbery: Good question! I've been a software engineer for 24 years now. My career splits into two halves: for the first 12 years, I was a “jobbing” software engineer. I quickly got disillusioned—after a while, it felt like just a thing to make a living. I was always the only woman on the team. Other things took my attention, like becoming a mother and writing novels.

Then I was laid off after about 12 years and so disillusioned I didn’t want to find another tech job. I retrained as a high school maths teacher—something I'd long wanted to do. I walked into it with eyes open, but it was so hard! In England, teaching is a very tough job, with enormous pressure and almost impossible workload. The kids weren’t the problem—it was lack of support from senior management, plus teaching 30 teenagers at once was not my strength.

After that experience, I actually missed tech. I realized how much I loved learning—teaching made me jealous of the kids who got to spend all day learning. Coming back to tech after four years out, everything was new for me. My knowledge was out of date, and I’d never done any web development before. It was like being a brand new software engineer. But my earlier experience did help me pick things up quickly, and being older, I moved into senior and leadership roles more easily.

My interest was always in mentoring and teaching, even when I wasn’t officially training. I’d help my colleagues, teach them new things, and I’d say it was great because I got to be a teacher without having to “be a teacher.” So it’s not surprising with hindsight that I’ve ended up doing what I do now. Eventually, after some years consulting, I went freelance and now I focus on what I’m good at and enjoy—teaching, training, helping people learn, working in small, collaborative groups.

Andrew Murphy: That does answer my question. When we met, I felt a real connection with you, not just because we share a similar accent, but because of this passion for teaching and coaching—helping others get better.

The part of my job as a leader I always loved best was teaching, getting to coach someone or work with a team on learning and development—that’s what led me to what I do now.

[14:03] Doubling Down on Strengths in Your Career

Andrew Murphy: Often, people don’t double down on the parts of the job they love or are good at. Career progression frameworks often encourage you to focus on your weaknesses. “Find the things to improve, put all your focus there”—rather than dialing up your strengths and creating more space for them. We all tend to spend retros talking about what didn’t go well, instead of what did. You can get so much more satisfaction focusing on your strengths and doing more of what you enjoy.

Clare Sudbery: Exactly! Sometimes we put too much focus on what we’re bad at, rather than what we’re good at. That’s not to say you shouldn’t try to improve, but we often focus too much on weaknesses.

[15:27] Why Hire Juniors? What Are the Benefits?

Andrew Murphy: So, focusing on improving and dialing up strengths, let’s talk about hiring and onboarding juniors. But first—why should we even hire juniors? Senior engineers, for the same number of hours, produce more and better code. Why not just hire seniors? What are the actual benefits to the team, leader, and company for hiring juniors?

Clare Sudbery: The answer seems obvious—we need new talent, and everyone has to start somewhere. But many people are resistant. The most common reason: “We don’t have time to train juniors, helping them is draining, we don’t have time for that.”

But what people discover, when they actually do help juniors, is it’s beneficial for everyone. Explaining something to someone deepens your own understanding. You might realize there are gaps in your knowledge, or things you didn’t know you didn’t know.

Juniors ask “why” and challenge assumptions, helping teams re-examine their work and the reasons behind it. This can motivate improvements, especially in areas that have become “invisible” to the team.

Another myth is that juniors arrive empty—they don’t! Even if they’re not familiar with your domain or tech stack, they arrive with skills and knowledge from elsewhere, perhaps even from a whole other career. Career changers can have hugely valuable skills from other industries. And diversity of background and experience stimulates your team—fresh perspectives, new ways of thinking.

If you only hire seniors, you often end up with people who are afraid to ask questions because they think they have to already know everything. With a culture that welcomes learning and asking questions, you make your team stronger and more honest.

[22:00] Knowledge-Obsessed Tech Culture & Nontraditional Juniors

Andrew Murphy: There’s a culture in our industry that values “knowledge” over everything else. If you admit you don’t know something, it feels like a power loss—but it shouldn’t! Also, juniors aren’t empty. I’ve hired people who transitioned from actuarial work and the analytical skills they brought were invaluable. The hardest thing about learning to code isn’t the syntax, it’s breaking down the problem, and that problem-solving skill is transferably learned elsewhere.

Clare Sudbery: Absolutely. Our recruitment/interview processes are often misguided—we act shocked if someone doesn’t know a thing, but they probably just never needed it! Not everyone remembers everything—they can Google it. Great engineers know how to solve problems, pull them apart, and ask the right questions. It’s not about encyclopedic knowledge.

If you overemphasize “what do you know,” people hide when they need to look things up or don’t ask for help, wasting more time and reducing effectiveness. If you hire juniors and make it safe to ask questions, seniors can do so too. Leaders who say “I don’t know” set a strong example to the whole room—it’s powerful role modeling.

[30:13] How to Find, Hire, and Onboard Juniors

Andrew Murphy: So, that’s the “why” of hiring juniors. Let’s move into the “how.” What are the best ways to find and hire juniors?

Clare Sudbery: A few things! First, pay really strong attention to diversity when hiring juniors. You’re in a good place because there are lots of organizations representing underrepresented groups—women in tech, Black people in tech, LGBTQ+ in tech, and many more. Seek candidates through those communities.

Yes, you’ll likely get a huge number of applicants. That’s challenging—but it’s a good challenge! The key problem is often “How do we make sure we get the good ones?” But the reality is, most juniors are capable of being good. Their success depends much more on what you do with them after hiring than some magical “fit” picked out in the resume stage.

So, stop worrying about only hiring the “best” or filtering out all the “rubbish.” Focus on finding people with good attitude and aptitude toward learning. Simple coding tests are fine (many platforms can auto-mark them), but invest more energy in how you onboard and develop them.

When I helped run the Made Tech Academy, we used a combination of a simple coding test, a quick phone interview to gauge attitude, and then interview days where we’d bring candidates in to pair-program and group-problem-solve. That let us observe skills in a live context, beyond what a test could show.

You don’t need to over-invest in narrow skills at the hiring stage. For the rest, it’s about what you do with them after hiring. Bootcamps and academies are a great investment—even if you can’t run one, the basic principle is the same: the return on investing in juniors is high.

[39:03] Changing Mindset: Challenges Are Opportunities

Andrew Murphy: I really like that mindset shift—from “600 applicants is a problem” to “600 applicants is an amazing opportunity.” We’re often obsessed with time pressure in our industry, always racing to the next feature. But if we want sustainability and a conveyor belt of senior talent, we have to keep bringing in juniors at the bottom. It’s the only way.

Clare Sudbery: Exactly! And your job as a tech leader is to balance these critical things—tech debt, paying down “people debt” by building that talent pipeline, etc. If a senior leaves and everyone else steps up (and you have juniors in the pipeline), you mitigate risk and lower cost. Basically, the only way to reliably grow senior talent is to invest in juniors.

[44:31] Common Challenges: Juniors in Production Teams

Andrew Murphy: What are the most common challenges teams face when integrating juniors into production teams, and how can we overcome them?

Clare Sudbery: The obvious one is time! Everyone’s always too busy. If you don’t help juniors, they get left to flounder and feel unable to ask for help. This turns into a demoralizing experience, making them less effective—and your investment is wasted.

But all of this is just like tech debt, writing tests, or fixing bugs—if you don’t pay attention up front, you’ll pay much more later. Juniors don’t need constant support, just focused help when they need it. The trick in coaching/mentoring is not to just do it for the junior, but to guide them and let them try. A little focused investment pays off quickly—they’ll bring fresh insights, and you’ll benefit as a team.

Pay attention to the payoff! As a leader, invest a little time, make it safe for them to ask questions, and then highlight those benefits for the rest of the team. You need leadership buy-in to make this sustainable and to balance deadlines vs. investment in team growth.

Andrew Murphy: I love the analogy to hygiene tasks like tech debt and testing. As tech leaders, it’s our job to balance those things, and investing in juniors belongs there too. If you don’t, you won’t have that conveyor belt of talent. The only way seniors exist is if they once started as juniors.

Clare Sudbery: That’s a great point! As leaders, it’s your responsibility to make those investments and to highlight their benefits for everyone.

[48:40] The Emotional Reality for Juniors and Leading by Example

Andrew Murphy: It’s easy to forget how emotionally tough it is to be a junior, how daunting it feels to be surrounded by more experienced people. We should empathize with that.

Clare Sudbery: Absolutely. I have a talk called “Let’s Stop Making Each Other Feel Stupid,” and part of it is the “Stupidity Manifesto”—let’s make it okay not to know things and to say so openly, especially for juniors. We’re all learning, all the time, and it’s fine not to know everything.

Andrew Murphy: Love that! Modeling “I don’t know” is so powerful in a psychologically safe environment. There’s no downside to it when your team’s culture is right.

[51:11] Wrap Up and What’s Next

Andrew Murphy: We’re nearly at the top of the hour! I can’t believe it’s been almost 50 minutes already.

Thank you so much, Clare, for joining me.

Clare Sudbery: Oh, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.

Andrew Murphy: Next time on the Tech Leaders Launchpad Livestream, my guest is Phil Haack, previously of GitHub and Microsoft, and we’ll talk about treating your team as mature professionals and active volunteers. If you want to follow these live streams, please subscribe on YouTube (better experience than LinkedIn), and if you want to chat with me, there’s a QR code to book time.

Clare, anything you want to promote?

Clare Sudbery: Yes—there’s a link to the Stupidity Manifesto talk, and also my podcast, “Making Tech Better”—26 episodes with industry professionals, all still relevant. And my website, Sudbery Software Engineer Limited; we’ll share that too.

Andrew Murphy: Thanks again, Clare—I’ll definitely ask you back, as we haven’t even scratched the surface. Goodbye everybody, see you next time!

Clare Sudbery: Absolutely—it’s been a pleasure. Thank you.

Andrew Murphy: Likewise. Goodbye!