# Should I hire two junior developers or one senior developer?

URL: https://wonderful.so/blog/hire-two-junior-developers-or-one-senior
Markdown URL: https://wonderful.so/blog/hire-two-junior-developers-or-one-senior.md
Content type: Question and answer
Published: 2026-05-29
Updated: 2026-05-29
Author: Rulian at Wonderful
Asked by: A startup founder
Tags: Hiring, Teams, Strategy

## Question

Should I hire two junior developers or one senior developer?

## Answer

Hire the smallest team that can do the work well. That's the boring answer, which is annoying because it's usually the right one.

Hiring more developers sounds like putting more people on a couch to move it faster. Sometimes it works, and sometimes everyone grabs a different side and yells in a hallway. More people means more communication, more review, more coordination, and more chances for two people to solve the same problem in two incompatible ways. That is not free.

## Juniors Need Direction

Junior developers can be great. They can also create a lot of work for the person responsible for guiding them, which isn't an insult, that's just what being junior means.

If you hire two juniors without a senior you trust, congratulations, you may have just hired yourself as the engineering manager. Do you know how to do that? Do you know how to review their work, or how to tell the difference between "this is taking time because software is hard" and "this is taking time because we are lost"? If not, be careful.

## Pay To Avoid The Right Headache

Every setup has a headache. A senior costs more, two juniors need more direction, a bigger team creates more process, and a smaller team moves slower if the workload is too large.

The trick isn't avoiding headaches. The trick is choosing the one you're actually equipped to handle.