There would be a lot fewer recruiters, and more experienced engineers.

Also a less monolithic tech culture. Right now every employee is more or less compatible across every company because we all seek to be transferable

It would be bad for the industry and would mean greater concentration of talent in one or two corporations.

An interesting thing that I have experienced is that a lot of recruiters and companies don’t care about your experience. All they care about is the exact experience they are looking for. In a world where most people stay in a position for a while, it’s only natural to gain a lot of experience and responsibility but not necessarily broad experience. So in that case, it would be very hard to switch jobs, industries, etc.

So what I am curious about is, did companies used to hire in less myopic ways?

Definitely yes. Over 25 years ago I started a second career, in tech. After 6 months in a Microsoft academic program I got hired by a Big Six accounting firm to do desktop support. My previous education was completely nontechnical (a BA and MA in history, and a JD), as was my experience (10 years as a trial lawyer). No way was I the most qualified on paper for that job, but the people who hired me saw something and acted. A year later I was able to move into a new job with better pay at a Fortune 200 company, originally hired to do applications analysis but shortly after found myself a lead desktop engineer and later a Unix sysadmin. At every turn I was fortunate to have hiring managers that looked beyond my resume to see the potential there.

Sure, in 1997 an HR person told me they needed someone with at least 5 years experience in Windows NT, but in general most interviews I had in the late 90s and early 00s were way less myopic. I'm not sure I'd have the same experience if starting out today.

You would think so but too many people get really comfortable and never expand their skills beyond the minimum required to do their current job. Last year I had an SRE position open I had to interview over three dozen people before I found one guy who could explain anything he had done in any detail. Everybody else was probably in the room when someone else did something, but could not give details of what was done, why it was done a particular way, or what they might do the same or differently if they did it again.

Some of the people I had to be honest with - if they are paying you the kind of money you say to reset passwords and stare at the wall, you should stay where you are and make sure that wall never leaves your sight.

I always wonder how people who are only in the room when things happen have any pride in their work and aren't embarrassed at their lack of production. A couple jobs ago was people who put most of their effort in to making sure their group of shitty engineers wasn't found out. It was a lot of work! Since they were all about quantity of people over any quality, they had to keep hiring more people, so there was a lot of time and effort in to interviewing to make sure they only hired other shitty engineers of their same ilk. I was hired outside of their scheme so we weren't best of friends lets say.

I’ve never understood the people who make no effort to better themselves - they work in technology, everything has a 3-5 year engineering life, they should always be preparing for the next thing.

People often can’t control what technologies their employer uses, but if they have solid fundamentals and I can tell they have tried to learn things on their own, more often then not I’ll give them a chance, and it usually works out because they are doing what they really want to do, and they are always looking for ways to build upon and improve what they’ve worked on.

How excellent do you want to be at generic enterprise CRUD apps?

Somebody has to build and maintain them.

Have you considered that maybe they’re fine with their level of responsibility and can leave work at the office?

That is usually the part where I shake their hands and wish them luck in their next endeavor.

If they are not there because they love working with technology, there are other places for them to be.

Agreed. I personally have seen divorces and breakdowns of entire families and friend groups of my colleagues, but what is most important is making sure that they stay up-to-date with the latest technologies and look to further improve themselves for the company.

Dang you didn't have to do em like that!

Dystopias happening right in front of us!

Or… am I hearing a new web3 startup?

(If I ever end up doing this; this comment will age super well)

Most definitely! There is nothing more glorious than sacrificing your health, soul, and personal relationships to perfect that CRUD application your users are forced to use to keep their job.

Most programming jobs are utterly boring. You are hoarding yes men and people who are good at lying.

Cringe.

Some people have a family, or otherwise time consuming personal lives, which does limit the ability to learn new things outside of work. I wouldn’t really blame them for not ”bettering themselves” if they don’t get to do that on paid company time.

I have never had an engineering (or really any!) job where learning on company time was absent. A lot of people like to grow and a lot of people don't. And a lot of the latter realize their waning usefulness and how they're one algorithm update away from being obsolete so they put time and effort in to masking that.

I enjoy being the dumbest person in the room. Others find it threatening.

And for those who are so busy outside of work that they can't grow inside of work, I feel for them because that sounds like an exhausting life.

>everything has a 3-5 year engineering life

This isn’t true for all industries. Some have software systems with engineering life measured in decades

True, but what percentage of software engineers work on those?

The only pool of software that both employs a large number of engineers, has an engineering life measured in decades and isn't rewritten every 3-5 years to a large degree is enterprise software, in my experience. Think C/C++/Java/.NET middleware type stuff.

And I imagine 90% of HN actively runs away from those jobs :-)

I wouldn't know. But I imagine there's an availability bias.

I've worked in more 'traditional' engineering fields (manufacturing, energy, healthcare, aerospace) and the vast, vast majority are long tenured systems built for dedicated systems. For those in SV, I imagine it's the opposite.

Sure there's a market for cheap disposable stuff hastily thrown together by people who barely know what they're doing because they're always using the latest tools for the first time to pad their resume.

But there's also a place for durable things of lasting value, built by people who enjoy perfecting their skills, technique, and craftsmanship with mature tools to solve problems well, learn the domain well, and build lasting relationships with customers who are big spenders.

It's kind of naive to assume that those people are making no effort to better themselves just because they're not always chasing after the latest hot new thing.

> everything has a 3-5 year engineering life

Nope. 30+ years of experience here working for different software companies in 5 different countries. I still use most of the knowledge today that I learned 30 years ago.

Software development fundamentally changes very rarely. However software development fashion changes all the time. But the latest fashion is just a slightly different implementation of the same underlying fundamental things I already understand. It is just a slightly different flavour of ice cream.

You've been reiterating this across a few threads this month, right?

Perhaps it IS the widespread case that a lot of us are getting paid as SRE for much less than you believe an SRE should know. Ultimately, where you've set the bar is arbitrary

There also would be less innovation as there would be less cross-pollination.

Arguable. Too much cross pollination leads to super-monoculture.

It's important to have distinct subcultures to progressultiple fronts sometimes.