Re:Should Younger Developers be Paid More?
by gaius on Wednesday January 19, 2011 @02:06AM
(#2118986)
Lost in all of this are the dedicated engineers who have put blood, sweat and tears into an organization, only to be left behind when technology changes. But is it their own fault? The company’s fault? Or just a natural cycle?
Let's say you join a company as, I dunno, a Unix sysadmin. When you go in, it's because they hired you for your Unix skills. But after 5 years, your value to the company isn't just those skills anymore, it's that you know the company's systems, its business, the particular way "we do things here", you have a network of people within the organization and can "get stuff done" and so on. And probably, by now, your Unix skills are falling a bit behind, because the company is not about the bleeding edge, they say if it ain't broke don't fix it (many large organizations only upgrade when the vendor desupports something) and besides, your time is spent in meetings now.
So people can fall into a trap - they're doing very well in the company - and don't even notice they're falling behind until it's too late...
Let's say you join a company as, I dunno, a Unix sysadmin. When you go in, it's because they hired you for your Unix skills. But after 5 years, your value to the company isn't just those skills anymore, it's that you know the company's systems, its business, the particular way "we do things here", you have a network of people within the organization and can "get stuff done" and so on. And probably, by now, your Unix skills are falling a bit behind, because the company is not about the bleeding edge, they say if it ain't broke don't fix it (many large organizations only upgrade when the vendor desupports something) and besides, your time is spent in meetings now.
So people can fall into a trap - they're doing very well in the company - and don't even notice they're falling behind until it's too late...