> we hired an earlier career engineer whose initial project was to handle all incoming provisioning requests<p>So many places do this and it's such a waste. Early career engineers have the most to gain from high-quality experience, yet they're the most likely to be assigned shit-shoveling tasks.<p>I've interviewed a lot of candidates with 2-4 years experience at prestigious tech companies who have no technical accomplishments they're proud of.<p>Take two new grads with similar attitudes and academics. Put one on a team that assigns them interesting, challenging tasks that stimulate their growth. Put the other on a team that assigns them an endless queue of "service provisioning requests." Come back in ten years to see where they're at in their careers.