A Reddit post claiming that 90% of senior software engineers owe their jobs to luck rather than skill has sparked a heated debate online.
The post questions whether the tech industry is truly a meritocracy or if timing has played a bigger role than many realise.
“Can we finally admit that 90% of Senior SWE are just a result of being born at the right time?” the caption of the post reads.
The Redditor argues that engineers who entered the field before 2022 did not necessarily work harder; they simply walked through an open door that is now slammed shut.
“If you entered the field before 2022, you didn’t grind harder, you just walked through an open door that is now slammed shut,” the post adds.
The great timing lottery:
According to the user, many people hired between 2010 and 2021 were making six-figure salaries with very basic coding knowledge.
“Back then, if you could write a ‘Hello World’ in Python and had a pulse, you were handed a six-figure salary,” the Redditor wrote.
In contrast, the post notes that today’s new graduates face far higher standards. Many talented computer science graduates from top-tier universities like Stanford, Berkeley, and MIT, with multiple internships, open-source contributions, and deep technical knowledge, struggle to even get interviews.
The Reddit user says this is a result of “bad timing” rather than a lack of skill.
The post also criticises the culture of gatekeeping in tech. Engineers who were hired when the bar was low are now often setting extremely high standards for new hires.
Calling this phenomenon the “Great Timing Lottery”, the post suggests that pre-2022 hires should admit their luck rather than claim their high salaries are purely a result of merit.
The post has resonated with many online, sparking debate about fairness, experience, and opportunity in the tech world.
Check out the post here:
Here’s how people reacted to the post:
Reddit users had mixed reactions to the post. Some agreed with the Redditor, saying it highlights how luck and timing have played a bigger role than skill in tech careers.
Others disagreed, arguing that experience and knowledge still matter, and that it is unfair to label all pre-2022 hires as “lucky.”
One of the users commented, “Time in the market vs timing the market is a universal law at this point.”
A second user commented, “As someone who has interviewed and hired SWE’s. I never want to do it again.”
A third user commented, “I think a lot of young people are freaking out cause STEM isn’t the golden ticket it once was, and it won’t be coming back. Especially for new grads.”
“They’re not tech workers, they’re recent grads who didn’t do any internships, and ChatGPT’d their way through a degree and are now shocked to find they’re unemployable,” another user commented.
(Disclaimer: This report is based on user-generated content from social media. HT.com has not independently verified the claims and does not endorse them.)
