What was the incentive for companies to train juniors into seniors in the past, post job-hopping era? Curious to know if that incentive has warped in the past two decades or so as someone who's starting their career now.

Same as always?

Cheap labor. It doesn't take that much to train someone to be somewhat useful, in mmany cases. The main educators are universities and trade schools. Not companies.

And if they want more loyalty the can always provide more incentives for juniors to stay longer.

At least in my bubble it's astonishing how it's almost never worth it to stay at a company. You'd likely get overlooked for promotions and salary rises are almost insultingly low.

>> What was the incentive for companies to train juniors into seniors in the past, post job-hopping era?

You get a lot in the interim!!! I started at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture.) The annual attrition was ~20%, but they still invested over a year of training into me.

But it worked:

- They needed grunt work in early years (me, working 75hr billable weeks). Not sure how much of this is viable now given LLMs

- They had great margins on the other four years. Not sure how much of this is viable now, as margins have shrunk in the past 25yrs as there is more way competition

- They used me to train the next cohort in years 4/5

- I appreciated the training and give them 60hr billable weeks on average for five years

It was a brutal and exhausing five years but i'm forever thankful to AndersenConsulting/Accenture for the experience.

There is no incentive now because the social contract is broken and there is too much mobility. Best you can do is find a supportive boss / a company that provides training opportunities.

Companies are organisms