Red Hat forced to hire cheaper, less senior engineers amid budget freeze
theregister.com
theregister.com
It's possible IBM never dies, or even never shrinks, but stays the same as the world grows around it. That seems like the same thing.
There are plenty of too-big-to-fail companies that at the end of the day don't care if the project succeeds, just that if somethings goes wrong you have some definition of legal recourse. You buy IBM because you write in your contract "we agree to buy the necessary computers systems and software as require per our vender (IBM) and the vender will be responsible for ensuring compliance."
Sounds great to both parties, except the loophole doesn't say that the requirements need to be correct. If things go great, fine. If things go wrong, customer gets to argue with IBM. Good luck with that. IBM isn't known for their hardware and software in the computer world, they're known for their lawyers.
At my first full-time development job, we had only entry-level and senior devs with no mid-level folks. As one of the entry-level folks, let me tell you-- what a mass of confusion that was. Hopefully Red Hat's targeting more of a well-rounded or balanced organization, rather than purely cost-cutting measures.
But on the other hand as an older, experienced developer, decisions like this can be interpreted to mean no old people. Later in my career I remember a software director saying "we're not looking for gray beards right now" when describing how he wanted to build out the engineering org.
It's great to see change that will allow more people in. But it's a bad idea to have decrees from the top dictating (by implication) that only young people should be hired. Surely there is a middle ground that can be found.
"There is no license cost associated with Oracle Linux. Pricing reflects $0 for license, and all charges are related to services."
Besides, as a senior or staff engineer, you should welcome this change because it gives you new opportunities to mentor and educate less-senior engineers, which is usually a prerequisite to promoting beyond staff.
Also look at startups. Startup code is often garbage. But it's good enough to get clients and get investors. Most software is pretty mediocre, but the selection threshold is low to begin with for most of it, so it's good enough.
RedHat here is assuming no doubt that senior engineers aren't leaving fast enough to cause issues. You won't have a company staffed with just newbies. And if someone vacates a senior position, I presume that position would be filled with someone already at the company. They can always back off on this hiring policy.
That policy existed because, based on past experience, the company knew that it would lose those people quickly. That was in the days when people often stayed with a company for life.
unless RedHat is getting into quantum computing or cpu design, i expect they can probably save alot of money and may in fact end up with a better functioning org.
A lot of businesses rely on RedHat being the last line of support for thier systems, and if they're losing or unable to hire genuinely senior engineers, that's a serious problem for everyone involved.
This makes me believe they are trying to do it right and not just cutting costs for its own sake.
This was their core asset, the total experience of its engineers.
Now, if you go on the way to take any unexperienced and cheap random dude to reduce costs. With the promise that it will have a hard time becoming senior for cost reasons. To do whatever software a ibm-like management decide. Then, Redhat as we know it will be a ghost of itself in a few years!
I assume you need really good people for things like kernel development but IBM-style enterprise development is a different story.
Back then, no one wanted to take a chance on someone who was inexperienced, which created an ugly dynamic where recent grads would be out of work for long periods of time, and it only got worse as time went on in unemployment, making for a negative feedback loop. A grad with 6 months to a year without post graduate experience was basically damaged goods.
At the same time, the millennial generation was in the news a lot, where the media were saying we were entitled, selfish, etc etc.
So it was like you were unlucky and disliked at the same time.
One time, I had some feedback that I thought would have helped the team I was working with - I was dismissed and told by my baby boomer boss that I needed to "pay my dues" before acting like I knew what I was doing. I had 6 years of experience at the time, though about 9 months at that company (though he had less than a year at the company). There were a couple of instances like that.
I think since the recession, the generations that were hiring after the recession (baby boomers and generation x) have been been conditioned to not trust less experienced (read: younger) people, and that attitude never changed. That's why you see articles like this - author seems to be from gen-x and is worried about pay for senior engineers in his cohort, but I am happy that less-experienced (younger) people will get the opportunity to work at a company like red hat.
Nowadays, it doesn't feel like companies want to take the on the "risk" or inconvenience of training inexperienced people, excluding Bay Area tech companies where the average age is in the 20s. Interestingly, those are the companies that are doing really well right now.
This feels like a dynamic unique to this time - legacy orgs are basically content with getting older [1]. There's a sense pessimism too nowadays, that it makes me wonder if the generations older than mine are afraid of the younger generation taking their jobs and / or driving down wages.
[1] https://twitter.com/uberfacts/status/1348723228924108808