Re:How the Valley treats experienced people
by ghaff on Sunday December 30, 2018 @12:13PM
(#18790116)
I mostly agree. Talented people can often demonstrate that talent across a wide range of situations. But it's naive to expect truly world-class expertise developed over decades to be readily transferable to other areas. It's easy to say people should keep their skills up to date. But if your compensation and reputation is based on a deep understanding of a narrow area that took years of experience to create, it's easier said than done to just learn something new and expect to be compensated similarly.
Sure, a games company or similar, but would Carmack be a 'rockstar' on something like a node.js stack? I'm sure he could pick the tech up quickly, but most of his skills lie elsewhere. And yet there is the expectation in tech that truly experienced people will be good at everything, just look at the post about 'things I don't know' from yesterday to see examples of this expectation.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18780065