This is why scarcity works so well for this target market. Its something they cannot just walk out and buy. They must instead earn it (buy spending lots of money and becoming friends with the sales assistant).
Cannot even count the number of times that my Ops teams had to write wrappers and o scripts to ameliorate issues suffered by apps rushed to production by shoddy dev teams. glad someone has written about it. Anyone in the business knows this has been going on forever.
The problem is the Ops teams get ZERO credit for enabling the shoddy work done by devs, the devs meanwhile get patted on the back, and frankly continue to be romanticized.
"move fast and break shit (and let Ops fix it silently)"
And of course the mysterious "fit" decision in the hiring process shows this. Chances are more independent thinkers that don't want to beer bash with the crowd or that has actual social boundaries won't want to participate in the reindeer games the author describes.
Clearly I carry a burning torch for the issue of age discrimination in tech as a 50-something - but seriously what 35 year old veep wants a 50 year old with more tenure than them working for them in their group? Family? We care about work-life balance? yeah sure bubba.
P.S. allowing yourself to get into this position was a mistake to begin with. One is none and two is one. Always have a backup/spare. To that end, if you cannot institute the burden of documentation for everything- at least then if you lose this person you’ll have a decent shot at picking up the pieces.
Never mind that bosses like the pieces of the puzzle to be interchangeable, no single point of failure. Sometimes bosses are threatened by a senior subordinates mindshare and will let them go in the next riff.
Great advice all around and solid article, works well at any age.
However, ageism, aka Age Discrimination(tm) is real in technology as I'm sure it is in other disciplines. I'm sure many will say, "don't suck" and you'll get hired. Remember your words/thoughts after you reach the final "culture/fit" check after jumping through every flaming hoop put in front of you during the interview process, and then suddenly, after all the glowing feedback the 30-something VP of Engineering or Paper Clips makes your candidacy flatline.
