Thanks for your response!

I agree with you: failure does not “always” spur innovation. However, innovation is almost always spurred from failures. That’s why making assessments with respect to the impact on the project, company, and team is so important — would you really risk the company’s lifeline to allow a junior engineer to learn? Maybe, maybe not. It also depends on the industry: software engineering typically has a higher appetite for risk and failures than say the rocketship industry. Finding that right balance is critical, and different for everyone.

Regarding your two points: I think it has to do with culture. In an open and transparent culture (which is often seen in Silicon Valley tech companies), I think we can avoid #1. One of my previous companies, Palantir, had such a philosophy. They would put very junior people (23 or 24) in charge of important projects, some would succeed and some would fail, but it was a risk they were willing to take even from the early days. As for #2, that probably deserves an article in an of itself, as it is a result of much wider causes than the scope of this article (history, systematic discrimination…etc).

Thanks again for your comment!