Why we do not put junior engineers on client work

The model is not a secret. You win the work with your most senior people, then deliver it with a few leads and a lot of junior engineers. The gap between what you charge and what you pay is the business. It is a legitimate structure. It is also why so many engineering leaders have a story about a team that looked excellent in the pitch and unrecognisable a month later.

The cost does not disappear

Junior engineers are not cheaper. They are cheaper per hour. The difference comes back as extra code review, rework, bugs that reach users, and senior time spent supervising. Most of that lands on your own senior engineers, who were the scarce people you were trying to protect in the first place.

• Code reviews take longer, which slows the whole team down, including your people.
• Technical decisions get passed upwards, adding a step to every choice that is not trivial.
• More bugs reach production, which is where they cost the most to fix.

What we do instead

Our engineers have about eight and a half years of experience, and we do not put anyone with less than five years on client work. We do train people — but on our own projects, our own internal platform and our own budget. Two protected engineering days a month, paid by us, is cheaper than the alternative and nobody has to pretend.

You cannot buy senior judgement at a junior price. You can only delay the bill.