Hey Elliot! As I wrote in the article, I myself hire junior developers and provide them great mentorship, but even after 1 year of training and paying them way too much compared to their skills ($100,000-$140,000) they're still not quite as good as hiring a senior developer for $150,000+ from day 1.

More importantly, only about 1-5% of American tech companies actually provide any training to their engineers at all; the other 95-99% of companies flatly refuse to hire junior developers.

If developers stayed with their companies for 3 or more years on average, then hiring a junior developer, paying them less, and training them senior level.

Otherwise, it just doesn't make any financial sense at all, no matter how great your mentorship is -- if the developers aren't joining the company with enough accuracy or accountability then it will take them over a year to develop it, at which point the junior developers who succeed will jump ship for 10-30% higher salary.

While you may have a different impression, those are the facts.