21
donuts
7y

Part 3: today has become a blog post.

WARNING: this is loooooooooooong

Background is my boss and I were talking about hiring the right people, also generalists vs specialists.

Essentially John and I are the specialists. When something goes wrong it ends up escalating to either him or me. But this is not sustainable as I can't handle the stress and most likely he eventually won't either.

And this goes back to general hiring standards.

All the good people leave and the remaining ones are stuck with all the problems and eventually for one reason or another they leave as well... or the code keeps getting worse... until someone decides to scrap everything and build a new one... But now the only people left to lead teams are monkeys.

Now current problem is the only person that can replace me is John and the only person that can replace John, at least in handling issues, is me...

It's a certain type of person, people that have a growth mindset and can pick things up.

Google and strong tech companies are full of these types of people where if needed there's always someone that can step in and help. They have the background and the ability to quickly learn. This also lets them innovate and identify and solve new problems.

I think that's what the technical interviews are for, to find these types of people.

And you really can't train this. I'm not sure how effective our "new" training program on high quality development is but I'm guessing it's not. Excellence has to be in the culture and it's not something that can be built overnight or by randomly hiring people.

So in a sense, tech companies aren't really paying well, they're paying cost to what their hires are really worth, after they've verified it, and enough to keep them from leaving.

Comments
  • 2
    *paying close to
  • 5
    Yup. I have a similar story about sales ppl, 3rd tier support and dev teams unable to resolve problems. They needed Good old me to step in, and figure out what is going on. Your situation is not as bad as you think it is. One: your skills are in high demand in the company, and your boss knows this. Time to ask for a raise, or work from home or sonething. Two: If you have had enough, you can go work anywhere you like, for better pay, and with better ppl. Make sure you choose sometging that interests you.
    In a more general note, most large organizations need a few ppl like you, and a lot of lower paid code monkeys. only monkeys is bad, and only generalists who get bored easy are even worse.
  • 2
    @magicMirror well id pick #2 but a lot of other companies are just like this or something always gets in the way, have some health problems and it needs major treatment at the worst times 😞

    And the stress prolly makes it worse...
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