[excitedNerd]

(Author here) That's actually a real conversation that happened over a year ago, and I ended up becoming technical lead on the project later! No signs of firing yet. Not all companies are too lazy to care about their employees. It is, realistically, the smartest financial choice to invest in growing the people you hire instead of just throwing them away and hiring new ones every quarter.

[gizmoduck]

I don't mean to deride you in any form or fashion but your experience seems to be the outlier and the OC's experience seems to be the modus operandi (having experienced it, myself).

As far as could tell, they weren't saying it didn't happen to you but to infer that's (generally) not how things work elsewhere. For example, if you've never heard of the phrase "being managed out"[0,1,2], you're lucky, but others haven't been and will continue to not be for some time.

You're preaching to the choir, essentially. :)

[0] - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/getting-managed-out-fired-wel...

[1] - https://www.mattgingell.com/managed-out-at-work-a-guide-for-...

[2] - https://www.ronankennedy.ie/blog/2017/1/16/am-i-being-manage...

[MaulingMonkey]

> but your experience seems to be the outlier

I'm not sure that follows just from adding your own ancedata ;). I've made my share of mistakes at every job, and haven't gotten managed out. What will get you fired is consistently under-performing, persistent personality conflicts, or repeated negligence without visible improvement.

Your company might be too lazy to have any sort of formal training program, but that cuts both ways - they'll be too lazy to hire a replacement if you're showing signs of improving, too. Your manager probably has too much on their plate to train/mentor you themselves, but I work places where coworkers like talking shop, and will generally be happy to share advice, techniques, thought processes, etc. - especially if it means they're enabling you to take things off of their plates to get more stuff done.

Now, granted, this isn't everywhere, but it's far from being OC's "unrealistic" either.

[excitedNerd]

I do believe my experience is something of an outlier in our field and I think it'd be great if it wasn't- I wrote the post in hopes that people might see this experience and use these observations to improve their own mentor/mentee relationships.

[gizmoduck]

>I wrote the post in hopes that people might see this experience and use these observations to improve their own mentor/mentee relationships.

Aye and thanks for the contribution to that effect/effort.

Maybe one day we'll get to a point where this is normative in the industry (and it's my earnest, strident hope that we do).

[ben509]

> It is, realistically, the smartest financial choice to invest in growing the people you hire instead of just throwing them away and hiring new ones every quarter.

Absolutely, a capable person can contribute far more if they develop professionally especially when trust is built between employer and employee, with the caveat that this is specific to tech firms whose business model centers around developing a body of code and institutional knowledge to maintain it. But this is a minority of firms and thus what a minority of people experience.

Most IT roles have a lot of churn. Contracting is a big one, but many roles in non-tech firms don't benefit much from highly skilled engineers because the software is not their core business. If you land in one of these roles, you'll likely have the negative experience many people talk about.

Broadly put, the best jobs in a company are usually the ones critical to what the company does. If you're doing support work of some sort, yeah, you're easily replacable. On the bright side, it's good experience you can leverage to get a better position.

The other problem is for everyone trying to become an engineer, most will fail, and the only way to know is usually to fail repeatedly, which is a miserable experience. If your management really is good at investing in their employees, it can be less painful as they can help you transition, but nothing can make trying really hard and failing a pleasant process. And since the quality of management is something like normally distributed, the bulk of people go through this with mediocre guidance.