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I’m beginning to think of this era as the arrival of Fred Brooks formulation of the highly productive or surgeon like developer; someone who is highly trained a

I’m beginning to think of this era as the arrival of Fred Brooks formulation of the highly productive or surgeon like developer; someone who is highly trained and can be highly productive. And “senior” developer is a proxy for that; highly trained and experience with the myriad of tech and mountain of knowledge software development requires today. And as such, truly “senior” developers are highly desirable and relatively rare. Hence rising demand and salaries. Spurring many to job hop and maximize their salary. Note I didn’t use the loaded “10x” or “rockstar” monicker intentionally, to avoid the incessant argument whether they actually exist or not. I submit the current trend as evidence they do, and are often “senior” developers. Title inflation is in fact a thing and not all seniors are equal. And of course the typical HN reader is near the top of the curve, so maybe we don’t realize just how much truly arcane knowledge is required to do this job.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
> And of course the typical HN reader is near the top of the curve I feel as if it is not necessarily "senior," as much as "on the bleeding edge." Lots of smart folks here, with a lot of "exploratory" energy, but as far as highly experienced, seasoned, folks; maybe it's not such a huge demographic. I know we're here, but we're not always welcome.
- JohnFen 5y ago
  This rings true to me. > I know we're here, but we're not always welcome. Us graybeards are working in an industry that generally doesn't value experience (mysteriously, it seems to equate "experienced" with "not capable with modern technologies"), so there's the baseline. And the HN demographic appears to be a particular subset of the young, which tends to amplify that.
_moof 5y ago
> the typical HN reader is near the top of the curve For seniority? Not a chance. The last time there was a poll (admittedly a long time ago), two thirds of HN's users were under 30.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

> And of course the typical HN reader is near the top of the curve I feel as if it is not necessarily "senior," as much as "on the bleeding edge." Lots of smart folks here, with a lot of "exploratory" energy, but as far as highly experienced, seasoned, folks; maybe it's not such a huge demographic. I know we're here, but we're not always welcome.

JohnFen 5y ago
This rings true to me. > I know we're here, but we're not always welcome. Us graybeards are working in an industry that generally doesn't value experience (mysteriously, it seems to equate "experienced" with "not capable with modern technologies"), so there's the baseline. And the HN demographic appears to be a particular subset of the young, which tends to amplify that.

_moof 5y ago

> the typical HN reader is near the top of the curve For seniority? Not a chance. The last time there was a poll (admittedly a long time ago), two thirds of HN's users were under 30.