Previously, the IT service company ZONE3000 did not work with beginners at all. They decided to change their approach a few years ago: the company launched the “Let’s Find Juniors” project to train specialists on its own. Currently, the team, which has over 2,200 specialists in Ukraine, includes about 40 juniors.
Previously, the IT service company ZONE3000 did not work with beginners at all. They decided to change their approach a few years ago: the company launched the “Let’s Find Juniors” project to train specialists on its own. Currently, the team, which has over 2,200 specialists in Ukraine, includes about 40 juniors.
The company hires beginners and trains them, after which promising specialists are distributed to teams where they continue their development.
"We changed our approach to hiring, because it's difficult to find specialists we specifically need. So one of the ideas was to grow them ourselves. And since our prospects are good, we don't plan to close, and we can look into the future for a little more than half a year, so the Junes can grow here," said ZONE3000 CEO Sergey Skurikhin in an interview for DOU.
During the existence of the "Let's Find Juns" project, half of the participants have grown significantly professionally.
"I don't understand why companies are laying off junior specialists. In my opinion, this is a shot in the foot. After all, today's juniors are tomorrow's middle, and later senior developers," Skurikhin noted, commenting on the layoffs of beginners against the backdrop of the AI boom.
According to the CEO of ZONE3000, the AI boom will repeat the dot-com scenario: after a period of hype and adaptation, the market will recover, and the demand for specialists will start to grow again. As soon as businesses understand how to make money with artificial intelligence, a new stage of development will begin, and over the next decade the number of new products will only increase.
"And that is why, in my opinion, we should not give up on junior specialists. In 5 years, the industry will again need senior developers. If we do not invest in training juniors today, then in a few years there will simply be no place to get them," added Skurikhin.
Replacing human workers with AI agents may only provide short-term savings for reporting to investors, Skurikhin believes. However, in the long term, such a strategy threatens companies with a shortage of experienced specialists.
