>work on critical health software while ignorant This struck a nerve because that's how I feel in my position. I really had no idea what went into the products

>work on critical health software while ignorant This struck a nerve because that's how I feel in my position. I really had no idea what went into the products that I'm not working on. I feel ignorant, but someone's giving my code the okay and occasionally throwing some back, so I must be doing something right. Someone said, "He looks like he can handle this job" and here I am with no prior experience in this particular field (I did have some programming experience). I wonder how many juniors these forensic software companies employ? On one hand, mission-critical companies should only hire people who are both experts in programming, experts in safe and reliable programming, and experts in the domain that they programming in. (note: actual experts, not "i've-done-it-once-or-twice-so-i'm-the-department-expert-because-no-one-else-is-really-working-on-it" expert) On the other hand, it's incredibly hard to find all three of those things in sufficient numbers to staff a team capable of handling large and complicated software. With employees in general changing positions more often (sometimes on whim alone, nevermind what the world needs), it's even harder to cultivate 5+ year employees who really know their way around the software and the business. There is just a huge volume of information and practice required to become that individual, and you really run into daily practical concerns if we were to only hire these experts. You have to be fed challenges that teach you so you can eventually become a real expert, but you need competent oversight -- a mentor, really. And sometimes you just don't have the luxury of tackling problems that are 'small enough'. Sometimes your mentor really doesn't have time to teach to the level of detail needed because let's face it, there's still a business behind all of this. And then they should be competent in security, performance, and a host of other skills because software is just so connected and reliant on the other parts of the system. So now you need someone with all of those previous skills and the ability to teach people well. These newly minted experts will have to pass down the knowledge as well. How do you cultivate experts without also creating a little danger to your customers and their customers and maybe even the general population? At some point, that trainee is going to have to make change and implement things without a safety net behind him. He's got to do this enough until he becomes that actual expert, but that takes a really fucking long time, and I don't think the market is really motivating people to take that route ("Why not just make some websites for 80k a year and save myself all of that stress and an early death?"). If someone else makes a big mistake, most of that time you spent to become better becomes worthless when your firm hits the front page. Now you're associated with someone else's problem and that's going to affect your chances of a job. So not only do you have to watch out for your own mistakes, but also your peers' mistakes as well. While you may not have to resort to flipping burgers, you probably won't be able to get a job in a critical environment for a while.