There’s a difference between being unwilling to hire entry-level developers (I hate the term “junior”) and needing experience that comes from a few years of “been there, done that”.

I personally enjoy having an entry-level dev on the team — the drive and hunger they bring can sometimes spark senior devs back into action, causing them to remember that level of enthusiasm, but you need to have a good team infrastructure to mentor them properly and make sure they’re growing on all levels, otherwise you’re doing them and your business a disservice.

Now, being *unwilling* to hire entry-level devs only because of lack of experience, I agree with Jorge, that’s just dumb. If you have the capacity and the ability to mentor, by all means, take a chance on someone and watch them surprise you.

To play devil’s advocate, though, sometimes we as hiring managers truly do need a specific level of skill, or knowledge attained through combined experiences from having been around the block a few times, to pinpoint problems that entry-level devs simply haven’t been exposed to … yet.