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sam_lowry_ • 04/03/2025 • 3 replies • view on HN

This is the general culture in Europe. Techies do not get promoted and do not even have a possibility to grow to management. Everything is run by humanities people and we do not even have the right words to describe this situation, although some voiced their concerns for many years, see e.g. The Two Cultures [1] from 1959.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures

Replies

godelski • 04/03/2025

  > and do not even have a possibility to grow to management.
Hang on, why should this even be the goal? I really do want to question the premise of this kind of ladder in the first place. You got someone with a really good skill, one that is critical to your operations and you... want to put them in charge of people rather than keep doing what they're doing? You can just keep promoting people with whatever direction you want them to go in. It is all arbitrary and made up anyways. So why not keep promoting them in a direction where you still benefit from those technical skills?
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mcv • 04/03/2025

Techies can get into management, but they stop programming if they do. I've been told I could get into a higher pay scale if I took on managerial or administrative tasks that I'm bad at and have nothing to do with programming. I'd like to be appreciated for the stuff I'm good at, not for doing stuff I'm bad at.

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lifestyleguru • 04/03/2025

European societies are extremely class based which is brutally visible in UK, France, Netherlands, even Germany. INSEAD and other MBAs see techies as washing machine repairmen.

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