[PolicyPhantom]

You’re absolutely right that mid-level hires buy immediate productivity. But “growth potential” isn’t just romanticism — it’s an investable trajectory. With the right project design, feedback loops, and domain exposure, juniors can grow into “multipliers” — people who combine technical skills with adaptability or domain expertise. That’s a kind of return you rarely get from simply adding another mid-level hire. In practice, resilient organizations balance both: mid-levels for immediate throughput, and juniors for long-term strength.

[JustExAWS]

Of course I meant 3-5 years of experience not 35 years of experience. :) I just edited it.

You’re not “investing” in anyone if their tenure is going to be 2-3 years with the first one doing negative work.

And why should juniors stay? Because of salary compression and inversion, where HR determines raises. But the free market determines comp for new employees, it makes sense for them to jump ship to make more money. I’ve seen this at every company I’ve worked for from startups, to mid size companies, to boring old enterprise companies to BigTech.

Where even managers can’t fight for employees to get raises at market rates. But they can get an open req to pay at market rates when that employee leaves.

And who is incentivize to care about “the organization” when line level managers and even directors or incentivized to care about the next quarter to the next year?

[PolicyPhantom]

I hear you — salary compression and inversion, along with short tenure, are very real structural problems. It’s understandable that managers and even directors end up focused only on the next quarter.

My broader point is that when these short-term incentives dominate, organizations (and societies) lose the capacity to build for the long term. That’s exactly why governance frameworks matter: they help create safeguards against purely short-term dynamics — whether in HR policy or in AI policy.