[erik_seaberg]

There’s a perception that big tech pays longtime employees less than they’re willing to offer new candidates, making promotion or job hopping the best ways to earn the current market rate. And if you copy Google’s promo process, you get promo-driven development, because there aren’t enough projects that actually need that level of complexity.

[eru]

And sadly, Google isn't even the worst. At least they seemed to allocate quite a few resources for turning off old systems and decommissioning them.

At many other enterprises, old systems never properly die.

It's just as hard, or often harder, to migrate off the last few uses of a system compared to launching a new system. But while you can get promoted for launching a great-enough new system in almost any organisation, good luck getting promoted for your heroic efforts in shutting down obsolete systems.

(I guess it's technically possible. Just unlikely in most places.)