A few days ago I was having dinner with some close friends and the discussion drifted to the nature of humanity. My friend argued that the measure of humanity was a sliding scale that was weighted against the amount of survival pressure that a person is under. Further, that survival pressure is primary driver of altruistic expression. Essentially that when the chips are down, our mental risk assessment becomes dominated by external factors instead of an internal sense of morals. The conversation depressed me because it darkens my world view with the clouds of doubt that any of us are actually firmly tied to our sense of morals, but instead it is all about how we perceive and interpret risk.
Working in an engineering organization involves daily interactions with risk management. Risks to timelines, risks to availability and operations, risks to security. We have to weigh the costs and expected ROI of preventative measures against the weighted probability and severity of negative outcomes. "If we invest in penetration testing, how much will it reduce the projected likelihood and severity of a security breech?"
Another fundamental but less discussed risk is the cost/benefit of investing in people. People have value in many different dimensions that matter to organizations. Specific skills, experience, knowledge, principles, curiosity, and determination; these are all things that drive varying degrees of the success of an organization. Some of these might be considered intrinsic to a person's nature such as curiosity and determination, but others, such as skill, experience and knowledge naturally accumulate with age. So to maximize as many dimensions of excellence as possible, organizations naturally favor senior talent because they have natrual advantages. Who wouldn't want to maximize chances of organizational success? I mean, this is dog-eat-dog capitalism.
The risk analysis of an organization will naturally vary with time as an organization's economic context ebbs and flows from peacetime to wartime and back again. But even as we shift footing, an organization's principles should persist, just as I believe people should not abandon their moral center when times get hard. It is in wartime, in times of challenge that our metal is tested and shows. I hear so much about "culture" in tech companies but so little about guiding principles and group conscience that guide us as we endure as an organization and as an institution.
So what is this post actually about? It's about inclusivity. The tech industry owes a great debt to many underserved communities. Even for those of us that don't belong to a specific minority group, we have all belonged to a group that is undervalued and underserved: the junior role.
Each of us started somewhere that required someone in a position of power to reach down a hand and take a risk on us. Maybe we had good grades or some extra help from an acquaintance that could vouch for us, but at the end of the day, we all started inexperienced, untested and unproven. Maybe it was a megacorp, or a scrappy startup or one of the countless middle size companies that make up the bulk of this industry, but every person in tech remembers, that open door, that first handshake, literal or figurative, that sealed our first position on our career path. The good faith opportunity, the chance to gain experience, confidence and prove to ourselves and others, our value. At every step in our careers, whether it was our first job or our most recent promotion was a handshake, a vote of confidence in our potential and value.
This is a subject I feel so strongly about, because I wasn't ready when I got my first handshake, but they took a chance on me and supported me until I was. I owe that handshake so much, from the cozy vacations I have taken, to the roof over my head. I have a bit of a lonely disposition and I don't usually see much of myself in others. But I absolutely see myself in those that waiting for that open door and that first handshake.
Whenever we can, we should try to see the potential and the value in people, even when they don't have 10 page CV to show for it. Junior roles bring new blood and ideas into an organization. They bring perspective and questions that we forgot to ask. They bring mistakes and opportunities for resilience. They bring connection with younger generations that will make up our clients one day; sooner than we think. They can bring fire, ambition and a "why not" attitude that reminds us of who we were and might be again.
But they always bring risk. Risk of slipping a deadline, risk of bugs and mistakes, risk of failure. It cuts to our core principles to take a human risk, especially when we are under pressure to deliver. Maybe next quarter when things are not as busy, maybe once we ship this feature, maybe once we stabilize this system. It's a fallacy that is so easy to tell ourselves. But the reality of capitalism is that tomorrow isn't promised to us and there is never going to be a perfect time to bring on a junior that will take time and investment to provide that all important ROI.
Our choices with that risk, I believe serve as a reflection of our values both as organizations and as people, and that we should take them under serious consideration. There is always going to be the question of how to make as much money as fast as possible. But an essential question that we must ask ourselves is "have we reached far enough to give someone that handshake?". And that handshake, after I've earned my last dollar and my last line of code has stopped executing, is how I would want to be remembered.