Okay.
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The word "premature" is meant to convey that many devs are reaching higher levels without the actual experience and expertise necessary to inhabit those levels effectively. We see the outcomes in so many ways. Slow bloated apps are pervasive; Data breaches have become normalized; Interviews are centered around specific frameworks rather than foundational knowledge. All of this come from similar root causes in my opinion. Our industry grew too big way too fast. And we didn't train anybody.
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Now, it's important for me to address the flip side of this coin so I can be really clear. There are many other factors at play here. This isn't meant to "blame" devs for any of the larger harms we see in the tech space. That's a related but separate discussion.
Also, I'm not judging people for seeking higher compensation. For most kinds of software tech, seeing workers extract more of the profits they are generating takes precedence over any concerns about quality. In my opinion.
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So, I'm only raising this in hopes that the dev community can start to see and discuss honestly how our individual choices can have impact in the larger system that we inhabit. The system is dysfunctional for many reasons that are outside of our control. But we can still have some self-awareness and humility about the parts that we do control.
If we want to that is. We can also decide that we're okay with all of this. I just don't want people to say they never heard it.
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Louis Ingenthronreplied to Marco Rogers last edited by
@polotek Yep. I think a big part of that is employers looking to placate workers with the job title so they could squeeze more value out of them without paying them more. Much like the push for AI developers, it's all about cutting costs.
The few companies that see the light and are still willing to pay what it actually costs to develop software are able to make good products.
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But I want to bring it back to the core issue I started with. What does it mean for a dev to have the required experience and expertise? When do you "deserve" to be Senior? Who decides?
Those are good questions. The answers are not as simple and straightforward as we might wish. In a lot of cases, the people deciding who gets raises and promotions are also not competent make these decisions.
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@polotek Did the industry grow to big or to lucrative? It seems like the incentives just go so skewed (in part because hiring was hard)
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The reality is that most of the time, we get to set our own standards for whether we're doing a good job. And that matters a lot. It's a lot of power and a lot of responsibility. But many of us don't really understand it that way.
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IMHO, before you can have any kind of serious discussions about individual choices and the system, you have to acknowledge that the vast majority of companies have decided they're ok with it.
Whether it being paying more for external hires than proven internal achievement, more focused on the next quarter's earnings report than a 5 year growth plan, or putting managements whims above customer needs, companies make these decisions first, and the rest falls in line or moves on.
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Andrei Kucharavyreplied to Marco Rogers last edited by
@polotek a point Alan Kay made a couple of decades ago as well.
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@GregNilsen I don't think it has to happen "before". I think people should get really comfortable with having multiple conversations whenever they feel like it.
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@McNeely I understand what you mean, but I would frame it differently. Hiring wasn't that hard. What happened was that the industry expanded a great deal. It's hard to quantify because we weren't really tracking where we were before. But I think the field of tech expanded more than 10x maybe.
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Marco Rogersreplied to Louis Ingenthron last edited by
@louis Louis man. I really don't wanna be a dick. But it feels like any time I hear from you, it's you really misunderstanding what I'm talking about. And it's starting to feel pretty frustrating. I think we have a very different way of viewing the world. Rather than find myself arguing with you, I think it's better if I don't engage. I just wanted to let you know where we stand.
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Marco Rogersreplied to Andrei Kucharavy last edited by
@andrei_chiffa Yeah I mean this is the elitist version of this take. But I don't really subscribe to it. The fact is that Shakespeare is overrated and shouldn't be taking up so much cultural room. In the same way, I think relaxing the credentialism around "computer science" has allowed us to create a much wider range of value from software.
But just like tv/movies, the level of quality is going to vary greatly. And we need to decide how to contend with that reality.
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Louis Ingenthronreplied to Marco Rogers last edited by
@polotek Sorry if this was unclear, but I was agreeing/concurring with what you wrote, not trying to argue against it.
I'll try to be more mindful of my wording in the future.
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Marco Rogersreplied to Louis Ingenthron last edited by
@louis you might feel like you're agreeing. But your framing is not like mine. I don't think we agree. That's why I said I'm resisting the urge to argue.
You're not doing anything wrong. This is mostly about me. It can be tough to dig deeper on these nuances until we're speaking the same language.
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@polotek how does this related to the split between "big tech" and the rest of the industry? If you are working for a startup with 20 or so employees there is not a lot of room for titles even though the most junior position could come with the responsibility to "do whatever it takes"; big tech has all sort of pathological practices such as stack ranking, OKRs, bloated process and technology, ...
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@UP8 for what it's worth, most of my experience is in startups. This is absolutely happening there as well. Startups get away with it for longer by just not having a career ladder at all. But as soon as they do, they feel the same pressure.
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@polotek in platoon-sized startups you get the role based on when you entered not on being good at the job; eng teams can get some stuff done even if the eng. manager doesn’t know how long the build takes or has a meeting and tells you about a bunch of conventions we follow and we also do code review but then when you look at the code those conventions aren’t followed even though is the job of the manager that process is in place, followed and changed if it doesn’t work
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@UP8 I love when people shit on managers all the way up until something is happening that they think should be fixed. Managers can't make people follow conventions. Their only levers are firing people and not giving people promotions. Engineers don't get fired that often. And most of the time, they are willing to take the promotion risk to not to do things they don't wanna do.
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@polotek I think that's a pessimistic view; in 2024 "voice" seems to be missing from most people's version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
My current manager really does look at my code and send things back he doesn't believe in; certainly our code doesn't reflect all our ideals (test coverage is great for security code, poor for React where a "simple" test seems to take 4 sec to run) but there is not the complete disconnect from reality I've seen in many places.