Making good technical decisions isn't something you can learn by observation. You have to make them, fail, learn why you failed, and get better over time. There

Making good technical decisions isn't something you can learn by observation. You have to make them, fail, learn why you failed, and get better over time. There's an intuition you develop. There's so much tech out there, and it changes so fast. If you're not the type that can stay "with it", you'll perpetually make bad decisions, or worse... decide on what is familiar not what's best. My point is, there's no way (with a few exceptions of course) someone with 5 years of observational experience has enough real experience to make good decisions that impact the organization over the long term. The ones who can do/learn this within 5 years are exceptional, and tend to be the ones deeply motivated by technology, ie. it's not just a job to them. They go home and work on tech for funsies... staying up late and getting up early to build, read, learn. That's not your average engineer.