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Marco Rogers Sep 17, 2024

Okay. I don't really wanna start a fight today. But at some point we're gonna talk about how the last 10 years has seen software developers pushing for premature promotion into Senior or Staff titles. And one of the ways they try to demonstrate that they deserve these promotions is by doing unnecessary "Arkiteksure".
https://phpc.social/@afilina/113153763726491625

🇺🇦 Anna Filina (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image Almost every day, I see microservices that should have definitely not been microservices. Almost every time, it's a big bad of mud with extra complexity. You can't just split things into random smaller things, slap HTTP in between and call it architecture. In almost every case, cleaning up a monolith would have yielded better outcomes.

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Marco Rogers Sep 17, 2024

There are a few spicy things here. So I want to unpack a few things just so folks don't misunderstand me. (You can feel free to be mad as long as it's about the right thing)

First, I said "premature promotion". I know a lot of people are going to wonder what that means. I'll try to state it clearly and directly. Before the bottom fell out of the market, devs could make a lot of money by getting raises and promotions. Part of the way to get that was by raising your level by any means necessary.

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Marco Rogers Sep 17, 2024

I believe we have been seeing an overinflation of levels/titles for a while now. This is mostly because devs were in high demand. They agitate to be "Senior" after only a few years of working. For better or worse, many companies have been making this concession in order to retain people. (whether it actually worked is another convo). But the knock on effects have been severe. "Staff" title has come into vogue as the new "Senior". And the expectations of Senior have been greatly decreased.

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Marco Rogers Sep 17, 2024

The word "premature" is meant to convey that many devs are reaching higher levels without the actual experience and expertise necessary to inhabit those levels effectively. We see the outcomes in so many ways. Slow bloated apps are pervasive; Data breaches have become normalized; Interviews are centered around specific frameworks rather than foundational knowledge. All of this come from similar root causes in my opinion. Our industry grew too big way too fast. And we didn't train anybody.

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Marco Rogers Sep 17, 2024

Now, it's important for me to address the flip side of this coin so I can be really clear. There are many other factors at play here. This isn't meant to "blame" devs for any of the larger harms we see in the tech space. That's a related but separate discussion.

Also, I'm not judging people for seeking higher compensation. For most kinds of software tech, seeing workers extract more of the profits they are generating takes precedence over any concerns about quality. In my opinion.

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Benjamin Reed

@polotek Yeah, I feel like a big part of this can blame "business" in general -- the shrinking of expertise as a thing business values means the only way for people to get raises and “advance" their careers is to job hop.

There's no incentive to work at something for a long time and become an expert at it, and to then pass your experience on to those lower down the ladder. Institutional knowledge has no value to an industry that lays people off for a one-quarter boost.