Hasnain says:

Great read as always from Charity.

“The bottleneck we face is hiring, not training

The bottleneck we face now is not our ability to train up new junior engineers and give them skills. Nor is it about juniors learning to hustle harder; I see a lot of solid, well-meaning advice on this topic, but it’s not going to solve the problem. The bottleneck is giving them their first jobs. The bottleneck consists of companies who see them as a cost to externalize, not an investment in their—the company’s—future.

After their first job, an engineer can usually find work. But getting that first job, from what I can see, is murder. It is all but impossible—if you didn’t graduate from a top college, and you aren’t entering the feeder system of Big Tech, then it’s a roll of the dice, a question of luck or who has the best connections. It was rough before the chimera of “Generative AI can replace junior engineers” rose up from the swamp. And now…oof.

Where would you be, if you hadn’t gotten into tech when you did?

I know where I would be, and it is not here.

The internet loves to make fun of Boomers, the generation that famously coasted to college, home ownership, and retirement, then pulled the ladder up after them while mocking younger people as snowflakes. “Ok, Boomer” may be here to stay, but can we try to keep “Ok, Staff Engineer” from becoming a thing?”

Posted on 2024-06-14T04:38:02+0000