I’m wondering what managers across engineering fields and companies, particularly defense, consider experience?
BACKGROUND
I am not a manager. I work at one of the large defense companies. I am a lead systems engineer at my company. While my senior manager is an engineer. Other management I have engaged with are not. Which is fine. So I get asked to be involved with interviews for technical assessment.
It seems me and my senior manager are usually on the same page assessing technical principles. And I’ve seen engineers get hired for fairly high roles in other areas that I may slightly interact with. That I didn’t believe had the technical expertise for that role.
Listen it’s NONE OF MY BUSINESS who hires who in another area. But it led me to think about what is “experience”.
I understand that certain experience depends on positions needed. Breath(width) vs depth. And how a broader skillset is useful in certain areas vs depth with a more precise technical skill set is better for another.
QUESTION TOPIC
The trend I see is ‘years of service’ promotions/hirings are weighed more than contributions to engineering or contributions to the company.
I find ‘years of service’ and ‘contributions to engineering/company’ do not always correlate. I have seen 6 year engineers contribute 10x to the company in terms of real tangible metrics (ie money saved, turn around time etc)via process improvement, design changes, testing efficiency improvement. But seem to get passed up for promotions or hiring because someone has more years.
Is this a normal trend, or am I looking at this incorrectly because yes I am not a manager. And I’ve only worked at one company because I love my work and my manager has been an incredible mentor.
I find ‘years of service’ is inefficient.
I know everyone needs money. And you should get awarded for years of work. But I think it can hurt engineers growth. But then again people just job swap to get raises anyways.
Pardon the long explanation. Thanks again.