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I think you're looking at things backwards. The questions you should be asking are how likely is it that any employee who joins a random new company feels as t

I think you're looking at things backwards. The questions you should be asking are how likely is it that any employee who joins a random new company feels as though they can have an impact on that company and how likely is it that they'll be compensated at market rates over a period longer than a year? I'd say the chances are generally pretty low. Therefore, a short tenure should be the average case for a rational employee. Don't kill the collective messenger.

alkonaut 4y ago
> Therefore, a short tenure should be the average case for a rational employee. Is rational the same as “maximizing career income”? I just feel it’s hard to give up domain knowledge in one thing (say insurance or flight scheduling or whatever) that you aggregate, to be a complete rookie in some other business. Software skills are the easy bit. It’s the domain knowledge that takes time. Rational employees want to feel good at their job, intellectually challenged, and appreciated for what they do. That involves financial compensation but I think it’s far from the major driver. Perhaps there are two major categories of devs: those that have broadly applicable skills (say web development) but no really deep domain knowledge or interest. They can write crud for insurance year 1 and crud for food delivery year 2 and continue that way forever while making good salary jumps each year. To those it seems almost like a bad idea to grow too fond of the details of insurance, as it would hinder their careers. On the other end of the spectrum you have devs that aggregate lots of domain knowledge in some narrower field. They might switch jobs every 10 years but when they do they almost have to go to a competitor in the same industry because otherwise they throw away too much domain knowledge. The only way they can capitalize is by selling that knowledge.

alkonaut 4y ago

> Therefore, a short tenure should be the average case for a rational employee. Is rational the same as “maximizing career income”? I just feel it’s hard to give up domain knowledge in one thing (say insurance or flight scheduling or whatever) that you aggregate, to be a complete rookie in some other business. Software skills are the easy bit. It’s the domain knowledge that takes time. Rational employees want to feel good at their job, intellectually challenged, and appreciated for what they do. That involves financial compensation but I think it’s far from the major driver. Perhaps there are two major categories of devs: those that have broadly applicable skills (say web development) but no really deep domain knowledge or interest. They can write crud for insurance year 1 and crud for food delivery year 2 and continue that way forever while making good salary jumps each year. To those it seems almost like a bad idea to grow too fond of the details of insurance, as it would hinder their careers. On the other end of the spectrum you have devs that aggregate lots of domain knowledge in some narrower field. They might switch jobs every 10 years but when they do they almost have to go to a competitor in the same industry because otherwise they throw away too much domain knowledge. The only way they can capitalize is by selling that knowledge.