Great resignation “ brain drain” effects

[tnff]

Originally Posted by Dane_in_LA

"If we built houses the way we design computer programs, one woodpecker would spell the end of civilization." That's from the 1970s. It's still true. It is, in fact, more true.

What goes on under the hood of a lot of websites is not pretty. Think "cobbled together from half a dozen 3rdparty offerings with a shiny set of graphics on top". And as for those shiny graphics: Developing websites with careful attention to user interface design costs time and money. Listening to user feedback is time-consuming. "Just good enough that it won't chase off the users" is - just good enough.
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Yet that also seems to be an industry where people take pride in not having a formal education and instead being self-trained. Perhaps a little more focus on proper engineering processes and design up front would mean less garbage code.

Originally Posted by GuyInSD

And this gets back to what I mentioned - the mentality of "parts is parts...Engineers is Engineers"; the idea that many management folks have that you can just take someone off the street and they can seamlessly replace someone that has decades of specific experience.

No matter the industry or organization, it is a guarantee that there are key pieces of knowledge that an outsider absolutely will not know, and even once that new hire is on the job, it would take a significant amount of time to figure out what he or she needs to know, yet alone figuring out how to learn it (without having an experienced predecessor available to help).

So true. In my field I see this mindset more among they younger executives who have no experience on the actual job, but came in direct into a management role. In the older days my managers where all engineers who had moved up through experience and they knew you couldn't just take someone off the street. But some of our new executives have said exactly that -- "You people take too long to train new hires; we should be able to take anyone off the street and train them in two weeks to do this job." (previous senior exec to the entire engineering workforce)

[jobaba]

Originally Posted by tnff

So true. In my field I see this mindset more among they younger executives who have no experience on the actual job, but came in direct into a management role. In the older days my managers where all engineers who had moved up through experience and they knew you couldn't just take someone off the street. But some of our new executives have said exactly that -- "You people take too long to train new hires; we should be able to take anyone off the street and train them in two weeks to do this job." (previous senior exec to the entire engineering workforce)

That definitely happens.

And the head of our department is the same. The person has experience, but their tehcnical expertise is well below every one of the managers.

It's the mentality that 'managing is a skill' and that if you have it, it's the equivalent of having technical expertise and you can manage any industry.

Not something I believe in, but you'd be surprised how many people do.