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If the average tenure is 20 years and person A takes 1 month to become effective and person B takes 6 months, then person B has to be 2.1% more productive to be

If the average tenure is 20 years and person A takes 1 month to become effective and person B takes 6 months, then person B has to be 2.1% more productive to be greater ROI. If the average tenure is 1 year then person B has to be 83% more productive for greater ROI. Increased job liquidity means employers seek increasingly specific fit above all other considerations.

feoren 5y ago
There is no programming job in the world that would take me six months full-time to become effective. Maybe a month, if it's an awful setup in an awful, unfamiliar programming language with unhelpful colleagues. It sounds like you're assuming if you hired a React programmer to work on your React app, it would take that programmer 1 month to get up to speed, while it would take a Haskell programmer 6 months. I claim: if your codebase is complex enough and your situation unusual enough that it would take a React programmer 1 month to write productive React code, the Haskell programmer will take 2 weeks. This is because the vast majority of the learning curve is in your domain and setup, not in how React components work. (Assuming for sake of argument they are actually smarter.) People vastly overestimate how long it takes a decent programmer to learn new tech.
- maerF0x0 5y ago
  in my experience people should be contributing _something_ within a month, hit a reasonable stride by 6 months, and asymptotically approach full speed extending out to 36 months. A lot of the speed a junior, or new person has, is in not considering the things they do not know. If the system is incredibly robust it will just absorb their bad decisions. But in most decisions it means they planted ticking bombs. Often 5 minutes today costs 5 hours in 6+ months time.
  - newaccount74 5y ago
    That's my experience as well. If someone is "productive" at their job in a month, then the job is either trivial, or they have a senior dev holding their hand.

feoren 5y ago

There is no programming job in the world that would take me six months full-time to become effective. Maybe a month, if it's an awful setup in an awful, unfamiliar programming language with unhelpful colleagues. It sounds like you're assuming if you hired a React programmer to work on your React app, it would take that programmer 1 month to get up to speed, while it would take a Haskell programmer 6 months. I claim: if your codebase is complex enough and your situation unusual enough that it would take a React programmer 1 month to write productive React code, the Haskell programmer will take 2 weeks. This is because the vast majority of the learning curve is in your domain and setup, not in how React components work. (Assuming for sake of argument they are actually smarter.) People vastly overestimate how long it takes a decent programmer to learn new tech.

maerF0x0 5y ago
in my experience people should be contributing _something_ within a month, hit a reasonable stride by 6 months, and asymptotically approach full speed extending out to 36 months. A lot of the speed a junior, or new person has, is in not considering the things they do not know. If the system is incredibly robust it will just absorb their bad decisions. But in most decisions it means they planted ticking bombs. Often 5 minutes today costs 5 hours in 6+ months time.
- newaccount74 5y ago
  That's my experience as well. If someone is "productive" at their job in a month, then the job is either trivial, or they have a senior dev holding their hand.