This discussion reminds me of the fixed vs. growth mindset, in the book Mindsets:
"In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong.
In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities."
I started in IT. I very quickly realized I could do a lot of tasks the other support staff weren’t willing/able to do, like learning regex and database normalization. Kept getting more dev related tasks since my boss was the only software engineer at the small startup.
Rather than get rewarded or hired as a developer by the company, as the support team grew I was headed toward being promoted to the support manager. They brought on someone else as a dev and that really made me realize I’d never be a dev in the CEO’s eyes. Bosses daughter did an internship so she got the coding tasks I would have gotten before. I was taking more phone calls with idiots from places like The Federal Reserve who didn’t know how to Google “hoe to format a hard drive”. So I left and doubled my pay.
Some managers just believe what you know is set in stone and you can’t progress or learn anything new. It’s a really bizarre mindset to have when a devs most important skill needs to be the ability to learn. Didn’t all these same people go to school?
> Bosses daughter did an internship so she got the coding tasks I would have gotten before.
In my experience at a couple of places, the moment you learn its a nepotistic environment you should leave as soon as you reasonably manage. As you saw, it's a sign of very bad management, the sort that can easily kill a company, see Wang Laboratories for perhaps the most famous example in the US.
"In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong.
In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities."
https://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/index.html