Soft Skills Engineering Episode 492: Fresh grads and startups or the goog
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Dec 22, 2025 Dave and Jamison delve into the art of onboarding fresh grads, discussing how LLMs can assist yet risk shallow understanding. They emphasize the importance of structured onboarding practices, like Amazon-style launch plans and clear metrics, to ease new hires into roles. The conversation shifts to choosing between startups and big tech, weighing the benefits of ownership against broader impact. They highlight the value of experiences in big tech while advising listeners to follow their own preferences and embrace learning opportunities.
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Hired Junior Instead Of Senior
- Dave recruited expecting seniors but hired a junior engineer who impressed them and accepted tradeoffs for growth potential.
- The hire highlighted how juniors can be highly valuable when you prioritize fit over title.
LLMs Speed Onboarding But Can Hide Judgment
- LLMs lower activation energy for exploring unfamiliar codebases and can make juniors productive faster than before.
- However, LLMs can mask lack of judgment and lead to technically working but conceptually wrong solutions.
Encourage Human Questions, Not Just LLMs
- Encourage juniors to ask teammates questions and avoid hiding behind LLMs to prevent isolation and loss of team context.
- Make interpersonal communication a norm during onboarding so learning isn't outsourced only to tools.