Comment by ChrisMarshallNY

Comment by ChrisMarshallNY 18 hours ago

13 replies

That's a thoughtful post, but I am skeptical of how "universal" her suggested Path Forward is. I suspect a hell of a lot of folks will have difficulty with the "people skills" stuff she mentions (and is almost certainly highly conversant in, herself).

> The most common answer from students when asked what they needed was a mentor who had just been in their shoes a few years ago, a surprising and heartening answer.

Mentoring is difficult; especially in today's world, where we are taught to despise older folks, and encouraged to treat everyone that we work with, as competitors.

For myself, I'm happily retired from the Rodent Rally, and find that LLMs have been a huge help, when learning new stuff.

pelagicAustral 18 hours ago

I think I would also ad to the mix that young folk these days are incredibly overconfident and averse to criticism. A few years back they got a junior dev in here, and I was supposed to help him get on our stack, and ultimately mentor him.

This kid would not accept seniority, would constantly and publicly try to divert from the stack we worked with, he would not take any input on his work without actively fighting the process and will crowd the conversation at team meetings with never-ending Reddit-tier takes that contributed to nothing other than fill his ego.

In the end I managed to convince my boss to get him out, and he now works in Cyber, which will probably cause even more damage in the long run, but at least I can now say "not my problem".

  • carlosjobim 18 hours ago

    > young folk these days

    You should have stopped to think about why such a person was hired in the first place, while there are an endless supply of very talented, hard working, and honest young people who would never be given a chance at all.

    But if I guess right, hiring is not seen as the responsibility of your company. And that's the core of the problem.

    • shinjitsu 16 hours ago

      Sometimes people who are able to talk a lot do quite well in interviews - and University students need to be exposed to a wide variety of topics, but rarely support large projects for a long time, so that wouldn't be something that would come up in an interview.

      • johnnyanmac 2 hours ago

        well yes. the people who are really hiring are not the ones who will be working with them. It's a reflection of the MBA optimized culture we live in, so no wonder those who speak the language get in... even if they can't actually work with their immediate teammates.

    • bsder 12 hours ago

      > You should have stopped to think about why such a person was hired in the first place

      The hiring process is probably barely better than random, and, probably even closer to random for a junior hire.

      Junior hires mostly don't know anything. So, you're pretty much hiring on "seems smart, curious, and enthusiastic" and praying a lot that you can train them. You're simply going to get misses.

      This is one of the advantages that you get running "cooperative engineering" programs. You get to vet juniors before they get welded into your pipelines.

      • johnnyanmac 2 hours ago

        Yeah but internships are also on the decline, sadly. more and more broken windows and no one is even picking up the shards anymore.

hiAndrewQuinn 17 hours ago

People skills are so important, I agree. Intergenerational people skills are especially important; in most things that matter, the old guard are the ones keeping their eye on the younger hires, pattern matching what they see over months of observation to who they've seen succeed before.

elric 18 hours ago

> especially in today's world, where we are taught to despise older folks, and encouraged to treat everyone that we work with, as competitors

What world is this? This not match my experiences at all. Is this a common sentiment among your peers?

  • silisili 17 hours ago

    It matches mine as well. People will pretend to be your best friend, but when push comes to shove, they will absolutely throw you under the bus. And maybe that's human nature, but I don't have it in me.

    The people who will give you credit where it's due and lift you in my experience are more rare than not, and almost always an older member, which perhaps is because they don't feel the need to prove themselves as much anymore.

    Despising older folks has been a thing a long time, made famous by Zuck starting out. Now that he's older, I wonder if he still feels the same way...

    • shinjitsu 16 hours ago

      >Despising older folks has been a thing a long time, made famous by Zuck starting out.

      and before that is was hippies with "Don't trust anyone over 30" which became deeply ingrained in at least American culture.

      • ChrisMarshallNY 16 hours ago

        Yup.

        The difference, this time, is the CEO is now a younger person, when they used to always be someone in at least their forties (more often fifties or sixties).

carlosjobim 18 hours ago

> where we are taught to despise older folks

9 times out of 10 it goes the other way around. Most young people have only had very negative interactions with their seniors, which has been wholly on the part of the senior. The current young generation is very respectful towards older people.

  • ChrisMarshallNY 18 hours ago

    > The current young generation is very respectful towards older people.

    This has not been my experience.

    I worked for a company that prized seniority, and I regularly dealt with folks older than me, more experienced than me, more capable than me, and willing to help me out. I worked there for almost 27 years, and it was awesome.

    In my experience, I'm usually written off as an "OK Boomer," before I've even had a chance to open my mouth to prove it (or not).

    My fave, is when we have a really promising text-only relationship, then, the minute they see me, it goes south.