4 ms·
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
by 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 agoI agree with your general point, but medical doctors are the very last example I would have ever picked.
- CPLX 4y agoI 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.
- danielheath 4y agoI think it would have been clearer if they had said "Tenure" instead of "Seniority"
- muzani 4y agoYeah, they're synonymous in many cultures (the amount of time someone holds their current post, and not experience skill). But it seems they mean different things in this context.
- mamidon 4y agoI think he means that a doctor with 15 years experience after school can change hospitals they work at with minimal impact. A hiring a senior engineer with 15 years experience, but not at your company, might not compare as favorably to an intermediate engineer with 8 years total experience, but 3 years at your company.
- majormajor 4y agoTenure, domain knowledge, and skill are all pretty different underlying things. Promoting someone with tenure just because of their domain knowledge is an extremely good way to hit the Peter Principle. You can get people who know the system very well but don't know how to take a step back and look around and evaluate the broader context vs just plugging along the same way as yesterday. Especially if you've never hired someone with those skills to teach them. You also run into bus-factor issues and robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul limitations around "this person's domain knowledge would be useful for this new project, but we've never ramped someone up to take over what they're doing now." Then there are the people who manage to get tenure without actually absorbing too much of that domain knowledge... so you need to be able to evaluate that, plus skills/aptitude/potential, not just years-in-seat, when deciding who to promote, when to hire, etc.
- Eisenstein 4y agoAren't these reasons why management is supposed to exist? If they can't figure out how to manage these situations, the issue is with the managers, and the new hiring should begin there.
- robocat 4y agoI think you imply it, but the important part is whether someone can learn a new position. People quoting the "Peter Principle" usually ignore that it is normal to promote beyond current skill level, since it is common to learn a position when in that position. The Peter Principle is that eventually an employee hits a roadblock where they are failing to learn the new position. That failure is usually attributed to the person, but I would guess the root cause is usually a lack of training ability within the organisation (not commonly recognised as the problem). I am not a manager, but I see these stereotypical misconceptions all the time... I'm not accusing you of ignorance at all: I'm just pointing out you could be clearer to help us all!