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That doesn’t sound like hiring the only „brightest“.

Intelligence != experience. We are all aware of the very bright junior engineer that produces huge code volume and creates massive technical debt. It takes experience to go with the boring, simple approach.

But we only hire from MIT, Waterloo, CMU, etc!

No, truly, I feel you. The Waterloo kids are literally cut from a different cloth though I'll take one of them to ten of anyone else. I feel really guilty about grabbing young grads with all that potential and putting them through this...

Grads aren't expected to know anything. It's all the early ex-google hiring that fucked us.

Not sure how big your company is and how large your influence. But it sounds to me like your new hires would benefit from more guidance and oversight. Those mistakes shouldn’t make it production unless nobody gives a damn.

I keep the platform systems running, so they aren't my responsibility, but as their profession used to be mine I think the way they do things is more than a bit mad. Had COVID not upended absolutely everything, I would have moved on years ago. I believe I'll be here until the industry winds change significantly.

I do get to slam my foot down on some things from time to time -- usually for compliance reasons. Like now when people tell me they need credentials for things so they can run their code in dev on their laptops, I tell them no and that they can use mocks for their testing like a professional.

Funnily the junior people expect and have no problem with this -- it's the seasoned folks who chafe and complain.

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