It is, but I’ve watched companies who were doing well start hiring younger, cheaper -10x developers and people losing their incomes, pensions etc. because they listened to the ’cheap’ and trendy-seeming who were eager to people-please and ignorant of their ignorance.
The reverse is true, of course. ‘Expert beginners’ and those just looking to avoid any hard work or responsibility until they retire are equally as dangerous.
If you’re a non-technical business owner, manager or anyone else who relies on tech and the people who build and run it, it is completely impossible to choose wisely, as you simply don’t know who to believe.
I’ve got myself to positions of high trust in companies and then found my advice ignored both when I warn against:
1. Hiring those I can see are not just bad value but going to destroy tech and teams through arrogance and being given more responsibility than they should have (yet).
2. Leaving the dangerously incompetent ‘seniors’ and workshy in positions where they are either preventing any kind of growth or, worse, accelerating a death spiral which ends in either zero ability to compete or a tech disaster of some kind (lost or corrupted data, breach, etc.)
If you’re trusted, that doesn’t mean that your advice to spend some time building smaller teams of actually competent people - or whatever your proposal is, will be heeded. The smell of money over a short term (or lack of it) are usually going to win.
I like the phrase "-10x developers"... whose work has a net negative value 10 times the value added by an average developer (haven't heard it before, but surely such people exist!)
You are a mind capable of bridging space and time, but have only three years of experience, and don’t have a job at FAANG already, and will value 0.5% of common stock as fifty percent of your total compensation. Because your code is bulletproof and so is our coffee!
The reverse is true, of course. ‘Expert beginners’ and those just looking to avoid any hard work or responsibility until they retire are equally as dangerous.
If you’re a non-technical business owner, manager or anyone else who relies on tech and the people who build and run it, it is completely impossible to choose wisely, as you simply don’t know who to believe.
I’ve got myself to positions of high trust in companies and then found my advice ignored both when I warn against:
1. Hiring those I can see are not just bad value but going to destroy tech and teams through arrogance and being given more responsibility than they should have (yet).
2. Leaving the dangerously incompetent ‘seniors’ and workshy in positions where they are either preventing any kind of growth or, worse, accelerating a death spiral which ends in either zero ability to compete or a tech disaster of some kind (lost or corrupted data, breach, etc.)
If you’re trusted, that doesn’t mean that your advice to spend some time building smaller teams of actually competent people - or whatever your proposal is, will be heeded. The smell of money over a short term (or lack of it) are usually going to win.