Actually the truth is that a lot of senior devs are not very good either, and have negative value. But they have an inflated value of themselves that does not reflect reality.
Pretty much all software projects seem to peak, and then decline in quality. There are only a handful of senior devs in the world who are actually good programmers.
I agree. But it’s not about that they have inflated value but it comes down to how “modern” software producing organizations work. Product managers and C-level people do not know what they are doing either. Most people are part of the “software engineering” theater, recruiters are recruiting, manager are managing, software developers are developing software, all of them just to get paid or gain status in the org. Most of the values come from that handful people who can really deliver.
> The mechanistic myth is the belief that
everything can be described as a neat hierarchical
structure of things within things. And few of us
realize that our entire culture is based on this
fallacy. While the world consists of complex,
interacting structures, we prefer to treat every
phenomenon as a simple, isolated structure.
> Through our software pursuits, the mechanistic
myth has spread beyond its academic origins, and
is now affecting every aspect of human existence.
In just one generation, it has expanded from
worthless theories of mind and society (behaviour-
ism, structuralism, universal grammar, etc.) to
worthless concepts in the field of programming
(structured programming, object-oriented pro-
gramming, the relational database model, etc.)
to worthless software-related activities that we
all have to perform.
> What is worse, our mechanistic beliefs have
permitted powerful software elites to arise.
While appearing to help us enjoy the benefits of
software, the elites are in fact preventing us
from creating and using software effectively. By
invoking mechanistic software principles, they are
fostering ignorance in software-related matters
and inducing dependence on their systems.
> Increasingly, in one occupation after another,
all we need to know is how to operate some
software systems that are based on mechanistic
principles. But our minds are capable of non-
mechanistic knowledge. So, when the elites force
us to depend on their software, they exploit us in
two ways: by preventing us from creating better,
non-mechanistic software; and by preventing
us from using the superior, non-mechanistic
capabilities of our minds.
> The ultimate consequence of our mechanistic
culture, then, is the degradation of minds. If we
restrict ourselves to mechanistic performance,
our non-mechanistic capabilities remain un-
developed. The world is becoming more and more
complex, yet we see only its simple, mechanistic
aspects. So we cope perhaps with the mechanistic
problems, but the complex, non-mechanistic ones
remain unsolved, and may eventually destroy us.
Wow, I'm immediately hooked. The book is free online as well to download.
agreed. Of the two software teams I've been on everyone has been a "senior". Some were fresh seniors, and some more staff. I've always been the most junior on the team.
2 devs on teach team were truly 10x before AI; each has 15-25 yrs of exp on very small teams, great at so many things: code - infra - linux internals - networking - incredible debugging skills - keep up with good practices - great docs - and desire to do things the "right way" - IQ + horsepower.
The other good senior devs may do some of those things.
My title is Senior 2 b/c I negotiated a raise during interview, but am mid-level at best. Now laid off.
Pretty much all software projects seem to peak, and then decline in quality. There are only a handful of senior devs in the world who are actually good programmers.
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