Wow, thanks for your honesty and sharing your team's numbers. They match up with my "gut feeling" about what happens with tech industry compensation: Steep ramp up from zero to ~5 years, much less so for the next 10, then pretty much plateau. I wonder if the way we [don't] reward experience in the software industry contributes to the "shortage of engineers" perception that keeps coming up in related discussions.
> I wonder if the way we [don't] reward experience in the software industry contributes to the "shortage of engineers" perception that keeps coming up in related discussions.
Probably not. As an industry, we simply don't have many people who have 20-40
years of experience, because 20-40 years ago the field wasn't that big.
We're yet to learn how to put a proper price on experience once we have enough
experienced programmers for everybody to see how much better than the
youngsters crowd they are (or are not) and when the job market starts to
demand them (if this ever happens).
