There is a severe workplace burnout problem in IT(especially MSPs); which when not addressed grows into bigger mental health issues and even literal sicknesses. There just isn't enough skilled IT people. The industry is immature and is bottom heavy. The top performers and seniors, are then overwhelmed with work and the business is unable to hire more senior people to reduce workload. Then the business keeps growing a…
> The industry is immature and is bottom heavy. I'm not entirely sure what "bottom" you refer to here. From what I see, there's a misalignment: Lots of senior people lose time doing work that doesn't require senior people, because there aren't enough non-senior people available to do that work. The solution to this is seen as hiring more senior people, which fails, because while there are lots of junior people, no on…
When I came to my company I was a junior front-end engineer with no CS degree. A few months in or so in I'm apart of a post-work discussion near the keg where the IT Admin head is going off on how the programming industry is getting flooded with low-skill juniors and how it's bad for the industry. He seemed entirely shocked when I pointed out that: (1) The ubiquity and availability of the browser meant there was going to be a continued need, so the problem isn't just going to go away; (2) This problem is one of software engineering pedagogy being woefully underprepared, which it is.
In that same range of time, on proffering a solution that seemed above my level, my technical lead, a much older former hi-frequency trading developer who prided himself on his C++ code (our team was Java/JS), inquired on how I got the idea, which had come about from doing reading/research on the subject. His reply was: "You read it out of a book?". Me - "Yes, [insert tech lead's name], that's how learning happens"
As someone who was coming from a background in humanities academia and training and coaching high schoolers in competitive debate, it is very very apparent that the industry is dominated, perhaps not by a type, but by an _attitude_ that is presumptuous, arrogant, skeptical of difference, and just straight up missing a certain relationship to social reality.
A year later, when said tech lead totally led us nowhere and quit, we had this rock star consultant come on who was making crazy money running the team and bucking all the organization's process in exchange for "results". Dude was rude and offensive to everyone who didn't lay before his eruditeness and efficiency. I remember his off-hand comment, given in an mentor-like role, on how it takes a certain type to excel in this village and how there are "too many guys who just like playing with symbols, they're usually into music or something to, it just doesn't work out". Like, wow, whole lotta absolutes coming out mouthes without much empirical basis behind it.