> Increase in salary for an engineer comes in changing jobs, not internal promotion (which, for places where this is even a concept, is usually constrained by some arbitrary limit, where as job change depends on your negotiation skills and resume). We're optimising for what is successful.
I agree that there are limits internally, if your goal is to stay on the "tech ladder". Those limits carry over across companies once you get to a certain point, right around where you hit the "Lead/Principal Engineer" point. Once you get there, a switch to another company is more often going to be for technology and problem domain (e.g. to do something "more interesting") than for a promotion (pay increase). Promotion by job switching is less likely at this point simply because there are fewer positions of these types required.
It's different for a switch to the "non-tech ladder". Even "laterally" (e.g. "Lead/Principal Engineer" -> "(Senior) Engineering Manager") is effectively a promotion: the compensation is better and the leadership is more likely to listen. It also opens up more opportunities up the ladder internally.
> I know there are lame fan boys, but many of us are actually value focused and realize that a more powerful language is cheaper across the entire product life cycle.
This is by no means absolutely true. It depends strongly on the product and the duration of the life cycle, among many other things. Language choice sometimes has a significant impact which can be positive or negative. Most of the time it simply doesn't matter that much.
I agree that there are limits internally, if your goal is to stay on the "tech ladder". Those limits carry over across companies once you get to a certain point, right around where you hit the "Lead/Principal Engineer" point. Once you get there, a switch to another company is more often going to be for technology and problem domain (e.g. to do something "more interesting") than for a promotion (pay increase). Promotion by job switching is less likely at this point simply because there are fewer positions of these types required.
It's different for a switch to the "non-tech ladder". Even "laterally" (e.g. "Lead/Principal Engineer" -> "(Senior) Engineering Manager") is effectively a promotion: the compensation is better and the leadership is more likely to listen. It also opens up more opportunities up the ladder internally.
> I know there are lame fan boys, but many of us are actually value focused and realize that a more powerful language is cheaper across the entire product life cycle.
This is by no means absolutely true. It depends strongly on the product and the duration of the life cycle, among many other things. Language choice sometimes has a significant impact which can be positive or negative. Most of the time it simply doesn't matter that much.