4 ms·

> Too far along in their career can also be tough. Often this is due just to salary demands not fitting a junior role. Why are there not enough roles for senio

> Too far along in their career can also be tough. Often this is due just to salary demands not fitting a junior role. Why are there not enough roles for senior devs? It's not like someone with ten years of experience wants to do the same thing over and over. It's like experience is undesirable in the tech industry.

tomp 13y ago
No, the thing is that there are not enough "interesting" and "complex" things to do - industry doesn't usually need to scale an app to the size of WhatsApp or Twitter, and even when it does, a handful of senior people managing a team of junior devs usually suffice. So, experience usually isn't really a benefit (after 3-5 years of experience), and can be a detriment for the reason you mention (boredom with doing the same CRUD app over and over again).
- mattgreenrocks 13y ago
  This is horrible. Maybe I should suck it up, but it's not my fault industry has zero imagination. What are alternatives? I want to be in R&D, something that America doesn't seem to believe much in.
  - tomp 13y ago
    I have no idea. Google X, Facebook AI Lab? I'm struggling with this myself, the solutions (for me) now seem to be: learn something new every year at work (by changing the technologies your employer uses or changing employers), and research in the afternoon.
    - digita88 13y ago
      I did exactly this - did my research after work, when my employer didn't budge in terms of putting on new technologies, or even improving it, I changed. The other move is to do a start-up and work on one's own R&D (how you do it is your call)
      - tomp 13y ago
        The problem is that I'm interested in robotics/AI, which (right now) seems to be a high-investment/low-probability-of-success endeavor.
        existencebox 13y ago
        On the contrary. I feel like if you can prove competency at depth in AI/robotics, you will be absolutely _set_ for the next ~half century of computing. The sort of problems we're solving in the areas of machine learning/planning have applicability literally everywhere, even outside of STEM fields. (looking at you, social sciences, a big data / machine learning twist is certainly in your future) The hard part is the "proving competency" part. I consider myself a somewhat competent programmer, but trying to catch myself up on the state of the art in my focus; N body simulation; is a hard enough problem, and even when you feel like you understand it, how do you let other people know? (little bit of chicken in egg here, since normally the PHD is this sort of signalling.) The answer I chose is "build fun projects in my free time." and with the advent of more accessible programmable robotics, you can certainly explore both of your interests. (I should take my own advice here too...)
  - wyclif 13y ago
    What? America doesn't believe in R&D much? I'd push back rather hard on that statement. US companies invest loads of cash in R&D, more than any other country. The problem is that if you expect to be doing R&D for a YC startup (or even a typical SV consumer web or B2B startup), you're really barking up the wrong tree—those sorts of companies don't do a lot of R&D. If you're really interested in that kind of work, you'd be far better off in bioscience or hardware. Or at least larger, established software companies.
    - sanxiyn 13y ago
      In software, Microsoft Research, IBM Research, Intel OTC, Qualcomm QuIC, etc. come to mind.
    - spiralpolitik 13y ago
      You need to be careful on how you define R&D. Pure R&D, the kind of culture that spawned say UNIX, Oak (Java) or Plan 9 etc is on the decline as in recent years the bean counters tend to look at pure R&D as a waste of money as there is no medium term return on investment. Look at the decline of IBM Research in the US as an example. Google and in some cases Microsoft are exceptions to this. However the US tax code allows companies to write off new development of new systems as a tax break, so you typically would be doing this kind of R&D at a startup until the system moves into production and is then accounted for differently for tax purposes. So US companies invest load of cash in R&D, just not the traditional kind of Pure R&D.
      - mattgreenrocks 13y ago
        Yeah, this is what I was referring to. Pike lamented this in his famous essay, "Systems Software Research is Dead." In it's place, we tend to have more focused R&D, which is still kind of nifty, but can imply a certain amount of acquiescence with the status quo.
CognitiveLens 13y ago
In my somewhat limited experience, companies often treat 'senior devs' as team leads, building mentoring responsibilities into the role rather than treating them as 'highly skilled devs who work efficiently and do not require much oversight'. For a mentoring structure, it is always more efficient to have more mentees than mentors, hence more junior roles than senior roles. The 'senior' = 'superproductive' structure requires fewer employees overall, but also brings an element of risk since the work is more concentrated. The net effect is fewer senior roles.
viscanti 13y ago
Do we know what role Acton applied for? I saw the twitter posts about the rejection but never saw what job he was applying for. It's hard for me to generalize about the industry from this one specific case, without even knowing what job he was allegedly rejected from (his experience may have been undesirable for an entry level position where the hiring manager felt he was overqualified, or conversely he probably lacked the experience at the time to get the role of CTO).
- smooj 13y ago
  He was VP of Engineering at Yahoo before he left, so it stands to reason that he was applying for a very senior role.
  - viscanti 13y ago
    That's probably a safe assumption. I'd imagine he was looking for another very senior-level job. In that case, it seems silly to use it as an example for why there might be a shortage of talent for entry-level to mid-level engineers. It doesn't seem like his experience was detrimental, or that he didn't fit some specific pattern (based on age, etc).

tomp 13y ago

No, the thing is that there are not enough "interesting" and "complex" things to do - industry doesn't usually need to scale an app to the size of WhatsApp or Twitter, and even when it does, a handful of senior people managing a team of junior devs usually suffice. So, experience usually isn't really a benefit (after 3-5 years of experience), and can be a detriment for the reason you mention (boredom with doing the same CRUD app over and over again).

mattgreenrocks 13y ago
This is horrible. Maybe I should suck it up, but it's not my fault industry has zero imagination. What are alternatives? I want to be in R&D, something that America doesn't seem to believe much in.
- tomp 13y ago
  I have no idea. Google X, Facebook AI Lab? I'm struggling with this myself, the solutions (for me) now seem to be: learn something new every year at work (by changing the technologies your employer uses or changing employers), and research in the afternoon.
  - digita88 13y ago
    I did exactly this - did my research after work, when my employer didn't budge in terms of putting on new technologies, or even improving it, I changed. The other move is to do a start-up and work on one's own R&D (how you do it is your call)
    - tomp 13y ago
      The problem is that I'm interested in robotics/AI, which (right now) seems to be a high-investment/low-probability-of-success endeavor.
      - existencebox 13y ago
        On the contrary. I feel like if you can prove competency at depth in AI/robotics, you will be absolutely _set_ for the next ~half century of computing. The sort of problems we're solving in the areas of machine learning/planning have applicability literally everywhere, even outside of STEM fields. (looking at you, social sciences, a big data / machine learning twist is certainly in your future) The hard part is the "proving competency" part. I consider myself a somewhat competent programmer, but trying to catch myself up on the state of the art in my focus; N body simulation; is a hard enough problem, and even when you feel like you understand it, how do you let other people know? (little bit of chicken in egg here, since normally the PHD is this sort of signalling.) The answer I chose is "build fun projects in my free time." and with the advent of more accessible programmable robotics, you can certainly explore both of your interests. (I should take my own advice here too...)
- wyclif 13y ago
  What? America doesn't believe in R&D much? I'd push back rather hard on that statement. US companies invest loads of cash in R&D, more than any other country. The problem is that if you expect to be doing R&D for a YC startup (or even a typical SV consumer web or B2B startup), you're really barking up the wrong tree—those sorts of companies don't do a lot of R&D. If you're really interested in that kind of work, you'd be far better off in bioscience or hardware. Or at least larger, established software companies.
  - sanxiyn 13y ago
    In software, Microsoft Research, IBM Research, Intel OTC, Qualcomm QuIC, etc. come to mind.
  - spiralpolitik 13y ago
    You need to be careful on how you define R&D. Pure R&D, the kind of culture that spawned say UNIX, Oak (Java) or Plan 9 etc is on the decline as in recent years the bean counters tend to look at pure R&D as a waste of money as there is no medium term return on investment. Look at the decline of IBM Research in the US as an example. Google and in some cases Microsoft are exceptions to this. However the US tax code allows companies to write off new development of new systems as a tax break, so you typically would be doing this kind of R&D at a startup until the system moves into production and is then accounted for differently for tax purposes. So US companies invest load of cash in R&D, just not the traditional kind of Pure R&D.
    - mattgreenrocks 13y ago
      Yeah, this is what I was referring to. Pike lamented this in his famous essay, "Systems Software Research is Dead." In it's place, we tend to have more focused R&D, which is still kind of nifty, but can imply a certain amount of acquiescence with the status quo.

CognitiveLens 13y ago

In my somewhat limited experience, companies often treat 'senior devs' as team leads, building mentoring responsibilities into the role rather than treating them as 'highly skilled devs who work efficiently and do not require much oversight'. For a mentoring structure, it is always more efficient to have more mentees than mentors, hence more junior roles than senior roles. The 'senior' = 'superproductive' structure requires fewer employees overall, but also brings an element of risk since the work is more concentrated. The net effect is fewer senior roles.

viscanti 13y ago

Do we know what role Acton applied for? I saw the twitter posts about the rejection but never saw what job he was applying for. It's hard for me to generalize about the industry from this one specific case, without even knowing what job he was allegedly rejected from (his experience may have been undesirable for an entry level position where the hiring manager felt he was overqualified, or conversely he probably lacked the experience at the time to get the role of CTO).

smooj 13y ago
He was VP of Engineering at Yahoo before he left, so it stands to reason that he was applying for a very senior role.
- viscanti 13y ago
  That's probably a safe assumption. I'd imagine he was looking for another very senior-level job. In that case, it seems silly to use it as an example for why there might be a shortage of talent for entry-level to mid-level engineers. It doesn't seem like his experience was detrimental, or that he didn't fit some specific pattern (based on age, etc).