How do they bring more “growth potential” than a mid level developer with 3-5 years of experience? The average tenure of a developer is 2-3 years. I expect that to increase going forward slightly as the job market continues to suck. But why would I care about the growth of the company when my promotion criteria is based on delivering quarterly or yearly goals? Those goals can much more easily be met by paying slightly more for a mid level developer who doesn’t do negative work both directly and by taking time away from the existing team?

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PolicyPhantom 3 days ago | parent [-]

You’re absolutely right that mid-level hires buy immediate productivity. But “growth potential” isn’t just romanticism — it’s an investable trajectory. With the right project design, feedback loops, and domain exposure, juniors can grow into “multipliers” — people who combine technical skills with adaptability or domain expertise. That’s a kind of return you rarely get from simply adding another mid-level hire. In practice, resilient organizations balance both: mid-levels for immediate throughput, and juniors for long-term strength.

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JustExAWS 3 days ago | parent [-]

Of course I meant 3-5 years of experience not 35 years of experience. :) I just edited it.

You’re not “investing” in anyone if their tenure is going to be 2-3 years with the first one doing negative work.

And why should juniors stay? Because of salary compression and inversion, where HR determines raises. But the free market determines comp for new employees, it makes sense for them to jump ship to make more money. I’ve seen this at every company I’ve worked for from startups, to mid size companies, to boring old enterprise companies to BigTech.

Where even managers can’t fight for employees to get raises at market rates. But they can get an open req to pay at market rates when that employee leaves.

And who is incentivize to care about “the organization” when line level managers and even directors or incentivized to care about the next quarter to the next year?

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PolicyPhantom 3 days ago | parent [-]

I hear you — salary compression and inversion, along with short tenure, are very real structural problems. It’s understandable that managers and even directors end up focused only on the next quarter.

My broader point is that when these short-term incentives dominate, organizations (and societies) lose the capacity to build for the long term. That’s exactly why governance frameworks matter: they help create safeguards against purely short-term dynamics — whether in HR policy or in AI policy.

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haijo2 2 days ago | parent [-]

Nobody is really behaving in a manner that is tied with long term thinking anymore.

Everything is short term. Just look at the equity market - its all pricing not intrinsic valuation, based on forecasting cash flows out in perpetuity.

Folks need to wake up to this realisation and just accept it as a flaw of the system we operate in. Until the system is revised and redesigned, its not gonna change.

	▲	PolicyPhantom 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		True — short-termism is deeply baked into the current system, from equity markets to corporate incentives. But that’s exactly why we need governance frameworks: markets alone won’t correct for long-term stability. Well-designed institutions can act as the counterweight — whether in finance or in AI policy.