Why I’m becoming a Junior Developer (after being an Intermediate)
Next week I will start my new job at Checkfront as a Junior Developer. For a lot of people who know me, and even those who have just seen my resume, this might come as a surprise. I have over 2 years experience as a developer, I am a tech mentor and instruct a coding course for a bootcamp, and have been responsible for assessing technical interviews. I know three languages (to a certain degree), try my best to read coding textbooks in my spare time, and learn new things through a combination of personal projects, courses, and freelance work. On paper I seem like a qualified intermediate candidate — and I had more than a few job offers to work as such — but I still made the decision to accept a junior offer.
Why though?
Plain and simple: I went with an opportunity that felt right for me, regardless of the title that came with it.
When looking for my next opportunity, I had three distinct goals for the company that I would work with:
1- I wanted a role that would be primarily dev work, less management.
2- After 5+ years of no work/life balance, I wanted a job that respected that boundary.
3- I wanted to work for a company that was invested in my education/future career as a developer, not just their bottom line.
Going into interviews, I was honestly just excited that companies were considering me at all, let alone for intermediate roles. I know full well that I currently have more experience and knowledge than a recent grad, but when I reflect on really good intermediates that I worked with in past, I felt like I was lacking. A solid intermediate hire is able to give their time and mentor juniors effectively. None of the jobs I was interviewing for would be in a tech stack that I was familiar with, so that seemed like a write-off. Good intermediates contribute to discussions on architecture and scalability and understand concepts that extend past language specific syntax — because those concepts are nottaught in bootcamp education, there are a lot of things in there that I am trying to self-learn but am still in the early stages of learning. So although I was excited for the opportunity to push myself and become a real intermediate, I was also terrified at the expectations that I had for myself and my abilities to meet them while still maintaining a reasonable work/life balance.
In meeting with Checkfront they seemed to check all of my boxes (pun very much intended). A friend who works there told me about their great work/life balance and how the company really respects time off. In my 4 interviews with the technical team, I really felt like they genuinely liked each other and enjoyed working together — which isn’t always apparent when interviewing with companies. And in terms of education and support, they not only offer to invest in employee’s ongoing education but also run a casual mentorship program with the seniors on their team. The long and short of it is: Checkfront appealed to me because their perks were really aimed at developers who were ambitious and wanted to push themselves to the next level.
The day after I completed the tech interview (spoiler alert, I did not kill it), they reached out to see if I would be interested in joining the team as a junior instead of an intermediate. Admittedly, at first I wasn’t really interested in that as an option when I had other intermediate offers on the table. But as I started thinking about it more, I realised that what I was looking for more than anything was an opportunity to grow as a developer with a team that would support me and understand my strengths. The fact that the hiring team was able to take a step back and assess me and see my potential, including the fact that I will likely need more support to get up and running with a new tech stack, is refreshing to me. And while a more senior position with bigger perks does seem nice, I knew that this was the right decision for me.
There are a good percentage of people reading this who graduated bootcamp with some kind of coaching from me — many of whom I am certain are intermediates themselves at this point. I have thought a lot about the optics of this because I know that many will see this as a definitive step back, but I don’t see it that way. I am really genuinely excited for this career move and I know I picked the right team to grow into a qualified and reliable intermediate (and hopefully senior when the time comes).
