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You have to see this from the point of view of a middle-manager whose main concern is his own career and salary. First, it's much easier to manage junior than s
by heisgone 5y ago
You have to see this from the point of view of a middle-manager whose main concern is his own career and salary. First, it's much easier to manage junior than seniors, more so when you are not an engineer yourself. Also, it's more likely you get a better salary when managing a large team of junior than a small team of senior. Even better, you can become a manager of managers if there is a bunch of juniors to manage. Another problem is that an employee cannot earn more than his boss, and non-tech managers salaries cap at a certain point.
- frankbreetz 5y ago>>Another problem is that an employee cannot earn more than his boss, and non-tech managers salaries cap at a certain point. This is only a problem in some places and is made up problem by management. Why can't someone make more then there boss, besides ego?
- sparker72678 5y agoYou're right on the facts, but this problem is still pervasive. People are gonna people, everywhere they go.
- barry-cotter 5y agoIt's a problem that reliably recurs everywhere because organisations are made up of people and people are unwilling to be managers over other people who make more money than them. They quit. You need managers and if you want to keep them they need to make more than their direct reports.
- handrous 5y agoAnother way this is done is with reinforcement of social hierarchy outside of comp. This is where you get blatant infantilization of developers and in my experience wildly untrue stereotypes (repeated uncritically as true all over most organizations) about "normal" developers being incompetent at design, UX, requirements gathering, communication generally, understanding business trade-offs and concerns, et c. Nearly all non-junior devs I've known have been at least decent at most or all of those things, actually. [EDIT] Oh, it's also why devs are compensated like professionals (they haven't been able to figure out how to stop that, yet) but work at open tables crammed together, under management's direct eye, like they're packing cocaine in Colombia or something.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago> Why can't someone make more then there boss, besides ego? I mean, maybe, but I've never seen anyone even propose a solution to ego so that's still a hard blocker.
- ghaff 5y agoIt's quite common in sales.
- WJW 5y ago"Why is X already solved, except for maybe reason Y" is a HN staple comment though. A few months I came across "Other than nuclear weapons regulations, is there any reason this can't work to fix <blockchain project XYZ>?".
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago...any chance you have a link, or even just what the article was about so I can search back for an excellent addition to my quotes file?
- WJW 5y agoTurned out to be about hydride tanks for hydrogen storage, but still: > Hydride tanks don't require those high pressures. Other than nuclear arms treaties, is there a technical reason they don't use those instead? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27194023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27194023
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y agoThanks; it's a little less funny than blockchain, but still good.
- jason0597 5y agoSome things in life are like the laws of physics. You will simply never make more money than your manager, no matter how many economic productivity arguments you can make.
- frankbreetz 5y agoThis is not one of those things: https://www.quora.com/Is-it-common-for-a-software-engineer-to-earn-more-than-their-manager https://www.quora.com/Is-it-common-for-a-software-engineer-t...
- delaynomore 5y ago>main concern is his own career and salary. Wait...ICs do not care about their own career and salary? That's news to me (Sr. IC).
- nharada 5y ago> it's much easier to manage junior than seniors, more so when you are not an engineer yourself I definitely have not found this to be the case. Good senior folks require very little active management.
- flippinburgers 5y agoI believe they are saying that senior engineers will know what to do and give pushback when an ignorant manager gets fixated on unnecessary goals. Juniors are easily told. The product will be worse for it. In a good team trust and experience are essential parts of the formula.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- toephu2 5y ago> problem is that an employee cannot earn more than his boss Actually this is quite common at FAANG companies. E.g., I make more than my boss.