This thread has grown somewhat stale but I never replied initially and I think I can probably address some of the differences in our experience. I don't run a

This thread has grown somewhat stale but I never replied initially and I think I can probably address some of the differences in our experience. I don't run a company, so I almost certainly have a different viewpoint, but senior engineers are often great at displacing blame/CYA, so it may not always be apparent to management what is really going on in an organization. I've never worked at a place that had particularly well-engineered software to begin with, and there were those who were either capable (and willing) to do a little bit of ad-hoc coding with an eye towards refactoring on a larger scale, or those who weren't. I've had really bad experiences with 'senior engineers' being left to build something semi-autonomously, thinking they know the best solutions a priori, etc., and seeing nothing functional at the end of months of effort. I've seen it happen way more than with junior engineers who are at least a little unsure of themselves. I'd probably take a good senior engineer over a good junior one for many of the hand-holding reasons you point out, but I really have worked with several young folks who did not have the problems you've encountered.