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While I broadly agree with your point, rewarding seniority is at odds with rewarding people based on how good they are at their jobs, from the perspective of in

While I broadly agree with your point, rewarding seniority is at odds with rewarding people based on how good they are at their jobs, from the perspective of incentives. The two are not always correlated and this is often why some companies hire externally instead of promoting from within. That said, companies are often wrong to hire externally as they misattribute their problems to their employees instead of to their own leadership. It is easier for them to blame others instead of themselves.

spaetzleesser 4y ago
“ That said, companies are often wrong to hire externally as they misattribute their problems to their employees instead of to their own leadership. It is easier for them to blame others instead of themselves.” After talking to a lot of managers it really seems that a lot of them are deeply skeptical of the people they themselves have hired.
rizzom5000 4y ago
> they misattribute their problems to their employees instead of to their own leadership It seems to be the case that effective and competent leadership is the exception. Even in the military, where enormous amounts of money are spent on attracting, training and retaining leadership; they're simply aren't very many that are very effective. Mediocre leaders get promoted and that's just what everyone else gets to deal with. Other examples include professional sports, academia and politics. The tech industry is hardly an exception here.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dbcurtis 4y ago
Paying for equal performance on the measurable aspects of the job is easier to do than putting a value on institutional knowledge. As an old bird that has had time to internalize the tech stack, I can make one comment along the line of “Don’t do that, and here is why...” — getting that kind of contribution noticed and valued is harder. Parent comment is really saying to find a way to put a value on institutional knowledge.
- JustLurking2022 4y ago
  From my experience, I see institutional knowledge as a double edged sword - it can save you from some mistakes but, very often, it's also the thing standing in the way of progress. I don't think I can count how many times I've seen a really poorly designed solution causing real pain, and everyone even knows it's bad, but it will never change until X leaves the org, which they have no intent of doing until they're rolling out on a stretcher. Usually X has been there a long time and knows everyone - often they've created enough messes that only they understand to avoid getting laid off. Heck, if the messes are big enough, they can even look like an above average performer to people who aren't overly familiar - generally never top of the stack though, as that might get them asked to take on more work.
  - GoblinSlayer 4y ago
    Usually in such cases institutional knowledge has a better chance of answering the question what causes the pain and how to fix it and what are tradeoffs.
  - cebert 4y ago
    > From my experience, I see institutional knowledge as a double edged sword - it can save you from some mistakes but, very often, it's also the thing standing in the way of progress. I can’t agree with you more. Having a combination of individuals with historical knowledge and new individuals with fresh perspectives can be so refreshing. We recently hired an external architect on the team. She’s great technically. However, I would argue her greatest contribution is fresh perspectives. She suggests ideas others (include me) hadn’t considered due to past negative experiences with team X or Y. By not being as aware of past histories or projects gone bad, she can encourage us to rethink things.
  - dbcurtis 4y ago
    > it's also the thing standing in the way of progress. The luddite attitude is orthogonal. Does it happen? Sure. But I also have the expectation that senior staff should be identifying the New, Better Way all the time. And are well-positioned to measure “better”. It is part of providing engineering leadership. An old bird that isn’t keeping up needs a job performance message.
vasco 4y ago
Leadership are mostly also employees by the way.
- kodah 4y ago
  "Leadership" usually means executives and those folks live in a different world of comp than Engineers and Project Managers, maybe even Product - but I know that bit isn't always truthy.
muzani 4y ago
Seniority has a very real value in tech, though. It probably doesn't have much value if you're say, a doctor, working with different systems each time that look similar. But in programming, you deal with systems, you know the undocumented gotchas of the system, and understand the flow of it better than someone who's completely new to it. You know when Chesterton's fence applies and when it doesn't. I often tell startups to promote the juniors instead of replacing them with seniors, because the junior who built the system would be able to modify it better. Even in sales and product, there's some value to understanding what the customer wants and aligning that to the features or a specific pitch and such.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  I agree with your general point, but medical doctors are the very last example I would have ever picked.
  - CPLX 4y ago
    I think the point is that doctors are mostly interchangeable. A reasonably experienced surgeon in one hospital in NYC is likely to be almost exactly as great on day one if he moves to the hospital across town.
- chii 4y ago
  > you know the undocumented gotchas of the system ... when Chesterton's fence applies and when it doesn't. All too real. Unfortunately, i do think that relying on such expertise is fraught with danger - because both your bus-factor is 1, and it makes it hard to bring up new people. In practise, this is hard to avoid, but i think a real senior developer should know to document the undocumented, and to communicate (using various mediums) to ensure that nobody needs tribal knowledge to work on a system.
- kortilla 4y ago
  > It probably doesn't have much value if you're say, a doctor, working with different systems each time that look similar. You either don’t know what a doctor does or I don’t understand the point you were trying to drive. Doctors spend decades refining their ability to recognize all kinds of issues that have vastly different conditional probabilities of occurring. Internalizing that is the entire value of a doctor over webmd. Being a doctor isn’t as simple as absorbing a mechanic’s guide to the human body and just doing the same procedures over and over.
Archelaos 4y ago
> The two are not always correlated Not always, but still I would assume that people with complex tasks generally become more experienced and accumulate specific knowledge over time that makes them better at what they do. Therefore, it should be the default for employees to get a raise every now and then, unless there are clear signs that someone is not performing and the employer is not interested in keeping the person.
larrymyers 4y ago
Rewarding seniority works if you have a fair system of performance management in place. Assuming your tenure at a single company is directly correlated with your ability to perform well, and grow and improve your value to the company over time, it would make sense. That being said, when somebody finds that fair system sustainably in place at a company, let me know. Fair and accurate measurement of an employees performance, free from bias and favoritism ... I'm just not sure that's how people work.
- GoblinSlayer 4y ago
  False dichotomy. It doesn't need to be free of bias, just bias shouldn't be completely insane like "you must change job every month". In fact there should be bias for merit, but instead employees are uniformly undervalued.
xkcd-sucks 4y ago
>as they misattribute their problems to their employees instead of to their own leadership In my own very limited experience of mid-size companies, it seems like senior leadership is first on the chopping block when dissatisfaction becomes real. However, the expected value of those positions is much larger due to compensation (i.e. $2e6 x 1 year = $2e5 x 10 years, better assuming execs can find jobs within a few years)

spaetzleesser 4y ago

“ That said, companies are often wrong to hire externally as they misattribute their problems to their employees instead of to their own leadership. It is easier for them to blame others instead of themselves.” After talking to a lot of managers it really seems that a lot of them are deeply skeptical of the people they themselves have hired.

rizzom5000 4y ago

> they misattribute their problems to their employees instead of to their own leadership It seems to be the case that effective and competent leadership is the exception. Even in the military, where enormous amounts of money are spent on attracting, training and retaining leadership; they're simply aren't very many that are very effective. Mediocre leaders get promoted and that's just what everyone else gets to deal with. Other examples include professional sports, academia and politics. The tech industry is hardly an exception here.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dbcurtis 4y ago

Paying for equal performance on the measurable aspects of the job is easier to do than putting a value on institutional knowledge. As an old bird that has had time to internalize the tech stack, I can make one comment along the line of “Don’t do that, and here is why...” — getting that kind of contribution noticed and valued is harder. Parent comment is really saying to find a way to put a value on institutional knowledge.

JustLurking2022 4y ago
From my experience, I see institutional knowledge as a double edged sword - it can save you from some mistakes but, very often, it's also the thing standing in the way of progress. I don't think I can count how many times I've seen a really poorly designed solution causing real pain, and everyone even knows it's bad, but it will never change until X leaves the org, which they have no intent of doing until they're rolling out on a stretcher. Usually X has been there a long time and knows everyone - often they've created enough messes that only they understand to avoid getting laid off. Heck, if the messes are big enough, they can even look like an above average performer to people who aren't overly familiar - generally never top of the stack though, as that might get them asked to take on more work.
- GoblinSlayer 4y ago
  Usually in such cases institutional knowledge has a better chance of answering the question what causes the pain and how to fix it and what are tradeoffs.
- cebert 4y ago
  > From my experience, I see institutional knowledge as a double edged sword - it can save you from some mistakes but, very often, it's also the thing standing in the way of progress. I can’t agree with you more. Having a combination of individuals with historical knowledge and new individuals with fresh perspectives can be so refreshing. We recently hired an external architect on the team. She’s great technically. However, I would argue her greatest contribution is fresh perspectives. She suggests ideas others (include me) hadn’t considered due to past negative experiences with team X or Y. By not being as aware of past histories or projects gone bad, she can encourage us to rethink things.
- dbcurtis 4y ago
  > it's also the thing standing in the way of progress. The luddite attitude is orthogonal. Does it happen? Sure. But I also have the expectation that senior staff should be identifying the New, Better Way all the time. And are well-positioned to measure “better”. It is part of providing engineering leadership. An old bird that isn’t keeping up needs a job performance message.

vasco 4y ago

Leadership are mostly also employees by the way.

kodah 4y ago
"Leadership" usually means executives and those folks live in a different world of comp than Engineers and Project Managers, maybe even Product - but I know that bit isn't always truthy.

muzani 4y ago

Seniority has a very real value in tech, though. It probably doesn't have much value if you're say, a doctor, working with different systems each time that look similar. But in programming, you deal with systems, you know the undocumented gotchas of the system, and understand the flow of it better than someone who's completely new to it. You know when Chesterton's fence applies and when it doesn't. I often tell startups to promote the juniors instead of replacing them with seniors, because the junior who built the system would be able to modify it better. Even in sales and product, there's some value to understanding what the customer wants and aligning that to the features or a specific pitch and such.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
I agree with your general point, but medical doctors are the very last example I would have ever picked.
- CPLX 4y ago
  I think the point is that doctors are mostly interchangeable. A reasonably experienced surgeon in one hospital in NYC is likely to be almost exactly as great on day one if he moves to the hospital across town.
chii 4y ago
> you know the undocumented gotchas of the system ... when Chesterton's fence applies and when it doesn't. All too real. Unfortunately, i do think that relying on such expertise is fraught with danger - because both your bus-factor is 1, and it makes it hard to bring up new people. In practise, this is hard to avoid, but i think a real senior developer should know to document the undocumented, and to communicate (using various mediums) to ensure that nobody needs tribal knowledge to work on a system.
kortilla 4y ago
> It probably doesn't have much value if you're say, a doctor, working with different systems each time that look similar. You either don’t know what a doctor does or I don’t understand the point you were trying to drive. Doctors spend decades refining their ability to recognize all kinds of issues that have vastly different conditional probabilities of occurring. Internalizing that is the entire value of a doctor over webmd. Being a doctor isn’t as simple as absorbing a mechanic’s guide to the human body and just doing the same procedures over and over.

Archelaos 4y ago

> The two are not always correlated Not always, but still I would assume that people with complex tasks generally become more experienced and accumulate specific knowledge over time that makes them better at what they do. Therefore, it should be the default for employees to get a raise every now and then, unless there are clear signs that someone is not performing and the employer is not interested in keeping the person.

larrymyers 4y ago

Rewarding seniority works if you have a fair system of performance management in place. Assuming your tenure at a single company is directly correlated with your ability to perform well, and grow and improve your value to the company over time, it would make sense. That being said, when somebody finds that fair system sustainably in place at a company, let me know. Fair and accurate measurement of an employees performance, free from bias and favoritism ... I'm just not sure that's how people work.

GoblinSlayer 4y ago
False dichotomy. It doesn't need to be free of bias, just bias shouldn't be completely insane like "you must change job every month". In fact there should be bias for merit, but instead employees are uniformly undervalued.

xkcd-sucks 4y ago

>as they misattribute their problems to their employees instead of to their own leadership In my own very limited experience of mid-size companies, it seems like senior leadership is first on the chopping block when dissatisfaction becomes real. However, the expected value of those positions is much larger due to compensation (i.e. $2e6 x 1 year = $2e5 x 10 years, better assuming execs can find jobs within a few years)