Bob Martin gave a talk in NYC a few months ago, and addressed this point. His theory is that the software profession is doubling in size every few years, and th

Bob Martin gave a talk in NYC a few months ago, and addressed this point. His theory is that the software profession is doubling in size every few years, and therefore more than half of all software engineers have less than a few years of experience. Attrition out of the field isn't as important. He did a far better job describing the idea, but it was fairly compelling. Maybe I just want to believe that it is true, but it makes sense to me. I do agree that there is a lack of a long term non-management career arc. I worked at a large mechanical engineering company and the titles were Engineer, Senior Engineer, Engineering Specialist, Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer. Once you made it to Senior engineer you could split off in a management track that went Supervisor, Manager, VP. It worked out fairly well, because the higher level engineers (Principal, and certainly Staff), made well more than the early management track. Going into management was not the only way to get a raise. Obviously this made the engineers better, but it also made management better, because it seems there are a lot of reluctant managers out there that just want to get paid more. edit: I found a blog post by Bob Martin that describes this in writing: http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2014/06/20/MyLawn.html http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2014/06/20/MyLawn.html