It's somehow incredible how this infiltrates even the most advanced classes of company in terms of technical knowledge. You'd expect a bit more objectivity
Two decades of requisite grunt work will also encourage your best junior talent to seek out start-up opportunities.
For silicon and hardware in general, the job market is much, much smaller, making that decision significantly more difficult.
I really feel for people who are in these companies. Who put in 6+ years of university/higher education and think that “if I could only fight my peers for the top spot” when “top” is relative.
To someone else’s point, I totally acknowledge that there are certain industries that you have to have a degree to do anything meaningful. I also know there’s tons of companies out there that need bright minds to create the next big thing.
I used to think that I was in competition with my coworkers for that promotion, for that top spot, to basically prove to myself that I could and prove to others I should. I stopped wasting time trying to prove what I already know and now focus on what I don’t.
Office politics sucks and I refuse to play the game. If I get passed up for promotion or if I’m unhappy I leverage my rights under my states at-will work laws and go find somewhere else to work.
The best places I’ve worked where this wasn’t a thing (the elite competition for who’s right) were places that acknowledged your contributions, explained why you did/didn’t get the promotion, laid out plans for you to achieve that (or have you on that list for when it opens up) and then actually honors that promise.
Edit: I know some people with diploma who "gamed" the system, e.g. memorized queries for exam without having any understanding of SQL and passed.
I didn't say it was. Meritocracy in this case was in reference to the company's internal competition (organic or not) for top spots at the company.
I completely understand there are certain jobs where you need a degree. Bar even. A lot of software engineering doesn't fit that mold. I'm 100% behind requiring an advanced degree if you're writing software that controls: lives/property/money in any meaningful way. Money in this case being large capital investments, not consumer payments. I'm a big proponent of hiring people who need a second chance, who maybe are down on their luck, or otherwise have a different path than suburban white America or the H1B visa mills they created (caveat, I'm white). I think there are plenty of opportunities for software engineers without degrees to build web apps, mobile apps, services, integrations, automation, etc.
There's selfish, winner takes all competition that creates winners and losers, and then there's healthy, productive competition where everyone who engages comes out better off for challenging themselves against a peer.
And obviously, there has to be a culture that provides resources no matter the outcomes. If you starve the 'losers', you're just creating desperate bait dogs in a toxic work environment.
To truly grow as a company you need to grow as teams. Cooperation, trust, empathy for your customers as well as your coworkers. Positions of leadership should be given to those who show an aptitude to lead through problems to desirable outcomes, regardless of who/where they are. Flatter org structures to prevent this chasm of salary difference which creates this toxicity in competition for those spots.
Netflix pays their engineers a ton, because they provide the value. Everyone is compensated at a level that everyone is happy working there (for the most part, happiness is relative, I digress). Companies should be providing everything they can to those who provide value to the company. If an individual wants more responsibility, they must provide more value as a result.
And half the time the supervision is the exact opposite. Concepts like stack ranking are a sure-fire way of making the workplace more contentious, politicised, and publicised.
Because that's the thing about
> intense competition
95% of the time it's about visibility, the technical excellence only matters if it's visible and publicised to decision-makers, which means self-aggrandisement and a mastery of office politics not only can compensate for lacking technical skills, but will usually edge out technical skill entirely.
When you’re small all that competitive energy is directed at your competitors. When you’re king of the hill that competitive energy turns inward.
Natural consequences, timely feedback, parallel modeling, Socratic questioning, mirroring...
If you want to know how to handle the politics of a large organization, try interacting with children. The parallels are amazing.
And he's actually 3, so I can't really sit around and wait another 5-6 years before I get to figure out the perfect "business customer" :D