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Comment by GiorgioG | Hacker News Reader

How else are you going to get senior+ level engineers going forward?

Yes. But why would a company today hire a junior dev? If I have limited budget, why hire a junior dev instead of poaching a mid level developer from somewhere else?

A junior dev does negative work. And with corp dev/enterprise dev the difference in price between a junior and a “senior” dev is only about $70K. The gap is even smaller with remote work even if you hire in the US. There are plenty of developers in low cost of living areas who would be glad to work for relative peanuts.

As far as where will the next generation of developers come from? That’s a collection action problem

Sometimes you want them "in 2 years from now" so you 'buy' them now. Also sometimes you want someone to do 3 out of 10 tasks of the job for a couple of years, and then get them to do another 4 out of 10, an ultimately get them to do 10/10 in 6-7 years from now.

I remember those years, I hope they are still around.

In 2 years from now, you’re going to want to promote them but your HR department is not going to give them the raise that would keep them there so they are going to find another job. They are going to watch new people come in in two years making market rates - salary compression.

The average tenure of a developer is 2-3 years. Almost no one stays at a company for 6-7 years

As a manager, the chance of you staying at a job for 6-7 years are slim and staying in the same position is even slimmer. Besides, you are going to be measured by your quarterly or at most yearly “OP1 goals” or equivalent

Ha! That's the rub: we won't. :(

In the same way that we don't get the volume of true hackers that the 70s-90s produced, because of the locked-down computing experiences most kids were introduced to from 00+.

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