I think part of it is flatter organizations and cutbacks in middle management. My manager is a VP who reports directly to the CEO; all his reports are individual contributors. He's the sharpest I've worked for, but he only hires a handful of very senior developers (unusually, I think our average age is around forty) because he wears a lot of hats and doesn't have a lot of spare time to mold journeymen to deliver well, in return for savings on salary that isn't going to be that large over time.
In a way I feel bad that we aren't doing our part to ramp up the next generation, but it would be hard to take the hit for doing so and still deliver on our current obligations. The alternative would be have his reports manage apprentices, but none of us is eager to make the compromises needed to get a stable system out of an army that's still developing good taste. If this problem is becoming acute, wages for junior devs will drop enough that someone can probably do that and eat our lunch (like outsourcing but without the language and timezone barriers).
I think part of it is flatter organizations and cutbacks in middle management.
I think you're right - you need excess capacity in your senior/middle management layer that can absorb training. I would also add "cutbacks in general". Taking in green people means hiring somebody a significant amount of time before you really need them. This means that if you are in the "don't spend a dime until you really really have to" mode, you will wait until the crisis hit and then you will want somebody who can start being productive TOMORROW.
It's a shame, because taking in inexperienced people means potentially ending up with a "perfect" person because you don't have to work against any previously acquired bad habits, you can inculcate him with your own ethic and so on.
In a way I feel bad that we aren't doing our part to ramp up the next generation, but it would be hard to take the hit for doing so and still deliver on our current obligations. The alternative would be have his reports manage apprentices, but none of us is eager to make the compromises needed to get a stable system out of an army that's still developing good taste. If this problem is becoming acute, wages for junior devs will drop enough that someone can probably do that and eat our lunch (like outsourcing but without the language and timezone barriers).