[amarkov]

The traditional American dream is that you change your status through making friends and simple hard work. If you're the hardest working and most dedicated Walmart sales associate, you'll quickly become a manager, and you can iterate on that at least until you're a regional director or something.

From that perspective, it's weird to look in on a typical Silicon Valley company, where it's understood that only people with specific technical knowledge are qualified to make important decisions. And it's downright scary to look at Uber, where the drivers have no internal mobility even in theory.

[prepend]

I’ve worked exclusively in tech for the past 30 years for 10 orgs or so. I learned new skills through formal and informal training. Not your Walmart example but I both progressed organically and joined company teams. Nowhere was there a static tech team without mobility. Maybe I’m just lucky but even giant banks and Gov orgs had career ladders.

If anything this is less of an issue in tech than other industries.

Tech knowledge isn’t innate, no one is born with it. So it’s good that decisions are made with people who have specific tech knowledge. It’s also good that tech knowledge is one of the most democratic, accessible, and learnable knowledges out there. I know dozens of high level tech leaders who have no degree at all, a couple with no high school diploma and one who dropped out of middle school.