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Not all experience is equal, but people expect to be compensated for the "experience" (time since entering the workforce) they bring to the table regardless. Th

Not all experience is equal, but people expect to be compensated for the "experience" (time since entering the workforce) they bring to the table regardless. That's the issue here. There is plenty of software that needs engineering, but we can't make a market. This specific person has 17 years of experience. Are they a staff level engineer, critical to their group? 17 years is more than enough time to become more competent than >99% of software engineers, if they have the aptitude for it. It seems unlikely that a company would layoff someone keeping all the juniors unblocked, unless management is totally incompetent. Or are they a senior with a decade of negotiated raises, who hasn't learned anything meaningfully new in that same time? They have something like 7 years of real learning, and the company is paying for 17. This is an obvious choice for a layoff. I haven't seen any signs that smart people who can write software are valued any less. They are just as hard to find, and are getting paid just as much as ever.

coffeebeqn 3y ago
Anyone who was job hopping in the last 4-6 years is also used to top of the zero interest bubble with COVID stimulus pay levels
halfcat 3y ago
> we can't make a market Bingo. It takes a buyer and a seller to close a deal. Supply going the wrong way with layoffs, demand going the wrong way with interest rates. Like a traffic jam, takes time to unwind the backlog.
rhelz 3y ago
> unless management is totally incompetent Sooo...how do you measure how good a programmer is? You've got to cut $200,000 from your budget. You can lay off 2 junior programmers, or 1 senior programmer. How, exactly should management determine whether or not the senior programmer is worth twice what a junior programmer is? This is not a rhetorical question, and generalities like "keeps the juniors unblocked" are not an answer, unless you can give some objective metric which really tracks that. And even if he "keeps the juniors unblocked"--how can a manager tell whether keeping the juniors unblocked is worth $200,000 a year? Management doesn't agonize for months of who stays and who goes. The directive comes down from Olympus and they have to be executed quickly so that P.R. can move on to another narrative.
- kapp_in_life 3y ago
  I mean.. thats the whole job for the manager? Through performance reviews and keeping track of the work their team is doing. If the senior is actually "unblocking projects" then it should be apparent. Project not making progress => senior gets involved => project making progress. Or senior gets involved and some architecture decision gets changed to alleviate some risk. If the senior is doing this but its a visibility problem, then it may suck but they also need to self-advocate if the manager isn't proactively keeping track of their team(like they are supposed to be getting paid to).
  - rhelz 3y ago
    > I mean.. thats the whole job for the manager? Sure, that's in management's wheelhouse....but really, have you never felt like your contributions to the team were undervalued? Or whether somebody else's contributions were overvalued? > hey also need to self-advocate if the manager isn't proactively keeping track Have you ever tried doing this? How did it work for ya? In my experience, its not a good idea to get yourself in a place where for you to be right, management has to be wrong. That's not a fight you are going to win.
clipsy 3y ago
> It seems unlikely that a company would layoff someone keeping all the juniors unblocked, unless management is totally incompetent. I've seen exactly this happen in every large-scale layoff I've been first-hand witness to (both those I survived and the one that got me).
deleted 3y ago
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pradn 3y ago
"Do they have 17 years of experience, or have they been repeating year one 17 times?"

coffeebeqn 3y ago

Anyone who was job hopping in the last 4-6 years is also used to top of the zero interest bubble with COVID stimulus pay levels

halfcat 3y ago

> we can't make a market Bingo. It takes a buyer and a seller to close a deal. Supply going the wrong way with layoffs, demand going the wrong way with interest rates. Like a traffic jam, takes time to unwind the backlog.

rhelz 3y ago

> unless management is totally incompetent Sooo...how do you measure how good a programmer is? You've got to cut $200,000 from your budget. You can lay off 2 junior programmers, or 1 senior programmer. How, exactly should management determine whether or not the senior programmer is worth twice what a junior programmer is? This is not a rhetorical question, and generalities like "keeps the juniors unblocked" are not an answer, unless you can give some objective metric which really tracks that. And even if he "keeps the juniors unblocked"--how can a manager tell whether keeping the juniors unblocked is worth $200,000 a year? Management doesn't agonize for months of who stays and who goes. The directive comes down from Olympus and they have to be executed quickly so that P.R. can move on to another narrative.

kapp_in_life 3y ago
I mean.. thats the whole job for the manager? Through performance reviews and keeping track of the work their team is doing. If the senior is actually "unblocking projects" then it should be apparent. Project not making progress => senior gets involved => project making progress. Or senior gets involved and some architecture decision gets changed to alleviate some risk. If the senior is doing this but its a visibility problem, then it may suck but they also need to self-advocate if the manager isn't proactively keeping track of their team(like they are supposed to be getting paid to).
- rhelz 3y ago
  > I mean.. thats the whole job for the manager? Sure, that's in management's wheelhouse....but really, have you never felt like your contributions to the team were undervalued? Or whether somebody else's contributions were overvalued? > hey also need to self-advocate if the manager isn't proactively keeping track Have you ever tried doing this? How did it work for ya? In my experience, its not a good idea to get yourself in a place where for you to be right, management has to be wrong. That's not a fight you are going to win.

clipsy 3y ago

> It seems unlikely that a company would layoff someone keeping all the juniors unblocked, unless management is totally incompetent. I've seen exactly this happen in every large-scale layoff I've been first-hand witness to (both those I survived and the one that got me).

deleted 3y ago

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pradn 3y ago

"Do they have 17 years of experience, or have they been repeating year one 17 times?"