Re:Everyone is still terrible at creating software at scale
by danieltillett on Sunday April 11, 2021 @02:25AM
(#26767927)
When someone’s future salary is tied to acquiring $new/$shiny skill then you are going to get this sort of rational behaviour from the engineers. Smart people respond to incentives.
Re:Everyone is still terrible at creating software at scale
by pdimitar on Sunday April 11, 2021 @07:05AM
(#26769406)
This is very logical because engineers know they can be fired any minute with zero recourse. Inevitably, they want to invest part of their current work time into being able to to apply for the next job.
If people have a good social safety net and a good job security, the depth of their skills improves by a lot.
Re:Everyone is still terrible at creating software at scale
by zmmmmm on Sunday April 11, 2021 @06:16PM
(#26773980)
You make a really good point about the relationship between job security and motivation and commitment. In my case we actually do employ people under medium to long term contracts, so this is less of a factor. But I think the phenonemon you mention is widespread and endemic in the IT industry which definitely contributes to the technology fetishism and resume building type dysfunctional behaviours that plague us.
Conversely, it's surprisingly difficult to get engineers to master things they aren't intrinsically interested in. We've had a stable tech stack and core architecture for 4+ years and one of my major challenges is to stop employees constantly trying to introduce $new/$shiny or major refactor X because it wasn't built how they personally would have done it and get them to just learn and understand the stack we already have - which addresses all our needs at most 5% less optimally than $new/$shiny.