Acima Development

Mike opens with a post-apocalyptic “choose your team” trope to frame today’s job market for junior developers: brutal competition, few openings, and the need to stand out with real, survival-level skills. He shares examples like his niece (strong student, no offers) and Acima’s internship receiving 300+ applicants, then asks the group what actually helps new grads stay relevant and get picked. Will’s core message is: breathe—computers aren’t going away, but the industry is cycling out of a long boom and juniors are getting hit hardest. He tells his own dot-com bust story (gas station job, selling plasma) to emphasize grit and staying in the game. His practical advice is to stop relying on being “in the stack of 300” and instead get known: show your work publicly, connect with people, join communities, and consistently post demos/blogs/tutorials for 3–6 months so hiring becomes about recognition and trust—not resume roulette. The group zooms in on communication as the multiplier: resumes should be clean and consistent (attention to detail), but networking and clear thinking matter more than keywords. Thomas and Eddy stress becoming more social, asking “dumb” questions, and building presentations around questions to invite engagement—especially remotely. For interviews, Mike and Will flag dishonesty and hand-wavy answers as major red flags; they prefer candidates who can explain their process, own gaps, and reason out loud (even if they need to look things up). They close by pointing to AI as a near-term opportunity: write and build around AI tooling and “vibe coding,” because established companies are hungry for people who can help integrate AI into messy legacy (“brownfield”) codebases—while noting the job crunch isn’t only AI, but also macro factors like post-COVID pullback, rates, and layoffs. Transcript: MIKE: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Acima Development Podcast. I'm Mike, and I am hosting again today. With us, we have Eddy, Thomas, Will Archer, Ramses, and Kyle.   I'm going to start by...in the pre-call, we were talking about this. I'm going to paint a picture of a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and you've probably heard this story before. So, you got your standard post-apocalyptic narrative. Everything's terrible. You're alone, and everybody's dangerous. And you get a chance to take a couple of people with you. And everybody else might not make it, right, or depending on who you pick, you're not going to make it, as you have to cross through the hazards ahead. So, who do you choose? Who do you choose to go with you? And, you know, this is a common theme. It's a trope [chuckles]. It's a trope. You got to choose the right person.   And who you're going to choose is probably somebody with a particular set of skills [chuckles], and those particular skills...yeah, and I think that's a direct quote from a movie, but I'm not going to go with those ones specifically. You're going to look for somebody who stands out. So, are you going to look for somebody who's exactly like everybody else? Or are you going to look at the person, like, I know that they are super aware of their surroundings, and when the zombies come in, they'll alert me before they make it here, right? I would definitely pick somebody like that in the zombie post-apocalyptic future.   Or maybe you pick the tough person, right? Or you pick the person with deep knowledge of the plants and animals around, you know, who can forage for food. You're going to want to assess somebody who has skills that can help you survive. And there are going to be a lot of people who are going to have average skills, and they're probably fine. But you're going to want that person who actually stands out.   So, trope time over. We are in a world today where it is hard...and this is not just in software. We have a situation throughout many industries, actually, but it's especially bad in software, where if you're a new graduate, junior developer, it is...we've talked about this before [inaudible 02:37] crisis.   WILL: Apocalytic.   MIKE: It's apocalyptic, exactly.   WILL: Apocalyptic.   MIKE: Exactly. It's apocalyptic. It is.   So, I've got a niece who graduated, I can't remember now whether it's one or two years ago, and was, I think, valedictorian at their high school and solid near top of their class, I think, in college, lots of extracurricular activities. Brilliant, personable, kind of everything you'd want, hasn't got a single job offer [chuckles].   Another example: last year, we had an internship. We tend to every summer. I believe we had over 300 applicants for that role, and we got to pick, right [chuckles], which was great, and we had some great folks. But, actually, we brought one person from the year before. So, 300 applicants for one job; that's some serious competition.   And if you are going to try to get a job in this market, it...well, first of all, I'm sorry. We've talked about this before [chuckles] a few times, you know. It's...I feel for you. It's...this is tough. But also, you're going to...we'd like to talk today about what you can do. So, you're the person in that situation. Now we're talking specifically to these people in that situation, but it applies to everybody, right? We're all permanently in a situation where if you don't stay fresh, you're at risk, you know.   We're going to talk today about how you can stay relevant. How can you stand out? How can you be that person who gets picked so you don't get left behind for the, you know, for the apocalypse to claim you? Well, I've got some thoughts. We'll pepper the discussion with them as we go. But, you know, I'm just going to straight up ask at the beginning, you know, what do you all think? Do you have anything specifically in mind you think that somebody should be doing who's in that situation that you've seen work, or that you think would work, or you think doesn't work [chuckles]? What do you got?   WILL: So, the first thing I'd say is, like, everybody calm down. Computers are not going away. They're not going away. Nobody's phone is going away. Nobody is, like, nobody's unplugging servers. They're not going dark. None of this is happening. And I think, like, you know, we as an industry have gotten used to boom times for so, so, so, so long that, like, you know, finding out how the other half lives is, you know, an existential crisis for us. But, like, that's not to understate, right? Like, it is really bad out there, especially for junior developers and new grads and stuff like that.   I mean, so, from my perspective, you know, Uncle Will's story time. I graduated in 2001, right, which was pretty much the depths of the dot bomb, you know, economic pullback. I graduated with a degree in computer engineering, not computer science, computer engineering, right? So, it was the hardware engineering and stuff like that. I graduated first in my class, not top 10%, like the, you know, the spring semester, not the spring semester, summer semester. Well, anyway, whenever I graduated, like, I was the number one graduate from that thing. But I was like, I graduated from a terrible university, not a terrible university. It was a pretty good, small engineering school, Wright State University, go Raiders, in Dayton, Ohio.   I, valuing my life and sanity, wanted to get the absolute hell out of Dayton as fast as I could, which is a decision I have not regretted a single time in my entire life. But, like, I moved to Austin where I didn't know anybody. I had no connections, could not get a job anywhere for anybody, you know. Like, I was working at a gas station to make ends meet, right, because I had to eat still. I was working at a gas station and selling my plasma, right?   You guys stay in the game, and it'll be all right. Like, the people who are good are still valued. The people who are good are still needed. The people who are good are still not as common on the ground as you might be led to believe. It's still pretty tough to do this work, and if you're actually in here...so, like, if you've got the knack for it and you have the grit and the drive to continue doing it, you're going to be fine. There's still a seat at the table for you.   If you're out there for the bag, you know, maybe not. You're not going to make it, you know. They, like...it happened in 2001. It's happening again in 2008. It's happened over, over, and over, you know. There was a massive hiring boom from COVID. And, you know, like, if you're just in it for the paycheck, this work is just going to chew you up. The businesses, the industry is just not going to...you're not going to be able to keep up because the money is just not enough. And there aren't, like, any variety of worker protections in the business. There's nothing. There's no licensure. There's, you know what I mean, it's just, like, a random, maybe high school dropout in Bangladesh can take your job tomorrow, and that's just what it is. That's the literal long and short of it, you know what I mean?   So, it's going to be okay, guys, but, like, yes, there's going to be a cull, and if you lost your fastball or, like, you're just in it for the bag, or you're not really committed to, like, the thing, then, like, sorry.   MIKE: And, honestly, if that's where you're headed, you wouldn't be satisfied anyway [laughs].   WILL: No, you...yeah, you'd get out after, you know what I mean? Like, you're going to get out now versus getting out in five years, where it's just like, I just can't...I can't do another code review [laughs].   MIKE: Yeah. But a lot of us who love it, there's a reward in building things the way we do that, if you've been hooked by it, it's hard to let go of. And if you've got that and you're willing to put in the work, I agree with Will, you'll get there. But it might be a slog. I did not have great times back in that early 2000s era either [laughs].   WILL: Yeah, right? Ye