4 ms·
> For seniors (say 10 years and beyond), they're not going to be with you long enough for progress to make a huge difference, especially if they're decent to st
by dimal 5y ago
> For seniors (say 10 years and beyond), they're not going to be with you long enough for progress to make a huge difference, especially if they're decent to start out with - maybe that's not true 100% of the time, some people will stay around longer than expected and some people really do keep growing rapidly even into late career, but it's a reasonable guess. You're paying them primarily for the growth they've already done.
I strongly disagree. Why would I not be around as long as a younger person? Most young people last about 3-5 years in a job as far as I can tell. As I get older, I'm jumping around less. And I'd say that my skills are growing faster than I was when I was younger. I don't waste time on a lot of fluff that I would have when I was younger. I focus on areas of growth that are more likely to have an impact, not only on myself but on the rest of my team. I see the same patterns in other older engineers I work with.
- ashtonkem 5y agoI don’t think there’s any evidence that senior devs stick around longer than junior devs. Senior devs are often in extremely high demand, and can change jobs more easily.
- cornel_io 5y agoOlder people are around just as long as young people, and learn just as much (yes, in some cases more, though in my experience as a manager that is not the usual outcome, it usually falls off slightly). The difference is the baseline: a person 1 year in should at least double their experience within the first year of working for you, whereas a person with 10 years experience will increase it by around 10%. Any way you cut it, measuring the current state matters a lot more for the more experienced person than the young one (current skill is an estimator of how fast the more experienced person has been learning, whereas for a new grad it's on you to estimate that based on other factors, and current skill doesn't matter much because it will change so fast).