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If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

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Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#41

Post by Quarrelsome »

lukeify wrote: post #13

> A senior engineer says “I want a 40% raise or I’m leaving,” and the company’s ability to respond depends entirely on what their alternatives look like. Except where I live there's a glut of people wanting any job they can find—for a variety of reasons ranging from high levels of immigration to layoffs in the last two years—and willing to accept discount rates because the alternative is being unemployed for another…

> the employer can hire a new senior engineer at below market rates to accommodate the specific learning they have to do for their new role.

Money doesn't cleanly convert into time.

Having juniors and mid-levels is about being able to promote an existing mid-level that knows the team and the system, with zero downtime. It's much easier to replace a junior than a senior because of the lower expectations and risk.

Furthermore, a lot of companies are struggling to hire right now because the market conditions creates a flood of applications and its quite hard to discern who's a waste of time or not which leads to hiring processes taking longer.

Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#42

Post by xnx »

Buttons840 wrote: post #24
throw_m239339 wrote: post #7

IMHO, What is likely to happen is that eventually businesses will just "hire" agents from a handful of AI providers directly, trained by... guess who..., each time you prompt Codex, Claude or whatever, you are also training these services while paying for them... If Seniors think that their jobs are safe, lmao...

If the knowledge work of Seniors is fully automated, wont pretty much all knowledge work be fully automated? Furthermore, if the source of your value and wealth is that you have an app, what does it mean when anyone can easily build an app? One day we might see a UI toolkit (so many of our modern problems are because our UI toolkits suck; my hot take) with deep AI integration and then apps will just be some microserv…

> so many of our modern problems are because our UI toolkits suck

The remainder of the problems are caused by overly complex deployment/hosting setups. Compiling a binary from source looks like a breeze by comparison.

Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#43

Post by crazygringo »

> A senior engineer says “I want a 40% raise or I’m leaving,” and the company’s ability to respond depends entirely on what their alternatives look like.

Right... the alternative is to let the senior engineer go, some work gets reshuffled a bit between other senior engineers, and lowest-priority work is delayed until they hire a new senior engineer.

It's not that the company is held hostage by the senior engineer, sheesh.

> you don’t have options. You pay the 40%, or you lose the person and spend six months (and a recruiter’s fee) trying to find a replacement at market rate, which is probably even higher.

Huh? A replacement engineer is "probably" even more than 140% of what you're currently paying? Then your company has a whole other problem which is that it is criminally underpaying its engineers.

Nothing about this post makes any sense. It's not how companies, employees, or the labor market work.

Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#44

Post by bitwize »

There's an easy solution for this:

1. Declare AI "the future" and mandate its use by all employees.

2. Hire college grads who have no idea how to code without AI.

3. Start PIPing problem seniors for not being "AI-first" enough. Great way to mask the ageism you are doubtless committing.

Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#45

Post by xyzelement »

SR2Z wrote: post #35
xyzelement wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a childish mindset. How much did you pay your plumber to fix your toilet last time? Why didn't you pay 40% more than that?

How is it childish? Not all plumbers cost the same or do the same work. If you wanna hire a good plumber, you'll have to pay them more. Likewise, if people on your team get better at their jobs and you don't want them to leave, you also have to pay them more.

Correct but not the point. The reason you pay your plumber 1x and not 2x is because someone else can do the same job equally well for you for 1x.

You don't pay 2x untill you are forced to (eg plumber is the only game on town) not because you are so enlightened.

Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#46

Post by lukeify »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #41
lukeify wrote: post #13

> A senior engineer says “I want a 40% raise or I’m leaving,” and the company’s ability to respond depends entirely on what their alternatives look like. Except where I live there's a glut of people wanting any job they can find—for a variety of reasons ranging from high levels of immigration to layoffs in the last two years—and willing to accept discount rates because the alternative is being unemployed for another…

> the employer can hire a new senior engineer at below market rates to accommodate the specific learning they have to do for their new role. Money doesn't cleanly convert into time. Having juniors and mid-levels is about being able to promote an existing mid-level that knows the team and the system, with zero downtime. It's much easier to replace a junior than a senior because of the lower expectations and risk. Furt…

> Having juniors and mid-levels is about being able to promote an existing mid-level that knows the team and the system, with zero downtime. It's much easier to replace a junior than a senior.

Yeah but the point of this post is that it makes an assumption that your company doesn't have mid-levels or juniors.

Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#47

Post by mplanchard »

xyzelement wrote: post #12
peteforde wrote: post #6

If you have people on your team that are valuable enough to demand a 40% compensation increase, then you should have been paying them 40% more without them having to demand it. It never ceases to amaze me that the owner class is so continually shocked that the people who build the value that the owners leverage into growing their fortune might suddenly realize their value. The entitlement is baked deep into the minds…

This is such a childish mindset. How much did you pay your plumber to fix your toilet last time? Why didn't you pay 40% more than that?

Do y’all not tip your plumbers?

Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#48

Post by Quarrelsome »

lukeify wrote: post #46
Quarrelsome wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the employer can hire a new senior engineer at below market rates to accommodate the specific learning they have to do for their new role. Money doesn't cleanly convert into time. Having juniors and mid-levels is about being able to promote an existing mid-level that knows the team and the system, with zero downtime. It's much easier to replace a junior than a senior because of the lower expectations and risk. Furt…

> Having juniors and mid-levels is about being able to promote an existing mid-level that knows the team and the system, with zero downtime. It's much easier to replace a junior than a senior. Yeah but the point of this post is that it makes an assumption that your company doesn't have mid-levels or juniors.

Aye, its assuming the org tossed them away when LLMs turned up or stopped recruiting at that level.

Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#49

Post by hermitShell »

This article touches on an extreme case "what if all your Sr. Engineers are financially independent?" but I think could do more to explore real world examples and address the elephant in the room, compensation through vested shares. I'm not personally experienced about that kind of thing, but I can imagine it helps maintain a healthier balance of power.

Certainly from a raw game theory kind of analysis, an engineer who can monopolize information and has gained authoritative understanding of the design can be crazy powerful, for better or for worse. If this agent optimizes for good salary, lowish effort and high stability... yes I can imagine a senior engineer who fits the name in rate of technical output, not only pecking order order.

Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#50

Post by woeirua »

crazygringo wrote: post #43

> A senior engineer says “I want a 40% raise or I’m leaving,” and the company’s ability to respond depends entirely on what their alternatives look like. Right... the alternative is to let the senior engineer go, some work gets reshuffled a bit between other senior engineers, and lowest-priority work is delayed until they hire a new senior engineer. It's not that the company is held hostage by the senior engineer, sh…

It’s not how companies work today, but it could be how companies operate in the future. Imagine a situation where single engineers manage a fleet of agents and own entire systems. This is already happening. If that engineer leaves then it’s game over for that system.
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