Years of Experience Does Not Matter
January 10th, 2008
So I had this really long post written to support my title. The only problem was that I feared my overall point was lost in dripping sarcasm and multiple paragraphs, so I erased it and I’m going to now summarize in hopes that it sinks in with you, the reader.
Do not measure work experience in 2008 - 1996 = 12 years of experience, which is better than 2008 - 2004 = 4 years of experience. Experience is a good term. No one should be judged on age. They should be judged on what they have been through and accomplished. Experience encompasses those things and age does not. Unfortunately, the human resource definition of experience is “number of years”. Heck, they even use phrases like “years of experience,” which instantly materializes experience to only a number of years including no other factors.
True experience is really fricken hard to measure, especially in an industry as young as the web. Others try to measure it with certifications and tests. I can’t say I agree as those methods approve of those who can remember black and white answers. I don’t think I can say this next line without sounding like I think I am a philosopher but here it goes. True experience is found in grey areas. If experience was black and white, wrong or right, then one could safely assume that more years equals more time to memorize those absolutes and thus, ultimately, equals more true experience.
So how do you measure the grey areas of someone’s experience? I don’t have any correct answer. I have a few ideas which I’ll mention but who knows if they are good. One thought, is to measure each year of experience separately. A year of experience as a junior developer is nothing compared to that of a senior developer. I know first hand as I’ve been both. You gain a lot more experience as a leader than a follower. As someone who sets the standards rather than someone who follows them. As someone who is burdened with greater accountability when things go wrong than someone with less. What I’m trying to say is more responsibility equals more experience.
In addition to the experience that you gain at work everyday, you can grow immensely in your free time at home. When judging someone’s experience, you have to include extracurricular activities. Experience is not solely gained at work. If I only gained experience at work, I would be a quarter of the developer that I am today. Some of the biggest breakthroughs I have had in learning have come sitting on the couch next to my wife (thanks for listening to the boring breakthroughs Steph). I have dedicated countless free hours, with which I could do anything, to furthering my knowledge in my field of choice. When determining someone’s experience, you have to somehow figure in the years gained outside of work.
What do those two suggestions above have in common? Well, if you want to find someone with more experience or you want to compare two or more people’s experience, you have to do some work. Experience cannot be accurately determined from a two hour interview. To find someone with experience, you will have to make some effort.
Believe me that was shorter than the monster I had written and deleted. What are your thoughts? Am I crazy? Do you have other ideas of how experience can be rated?
Updates
A few others have followed my lead (ha, yeah right) and posted on the topic.
Subscribe
Believe it or not, years of experience does matter. I do agree that more responsibility will net you more experience quicker, but ultimately, even those gray areas get filled in the longer you’ve been doing it.
I was a pretty cocky SOB when i first began working professionally…hell, even while I was still in school since I was doing things at a high enough level that my work was getting noticed by “real” firms and clients. And while I still maintain I had the ability to back it up at the time, I didn’t really know squat.
I was fortunate to be influenced by several great individuals throughout my career, and continue to learn today. A year from now, I’ll be even better. A year after that, even more.
The early opportunities I received to lead absolutely helped build experience faster and definitely contributed to what I consider to be a pretty fast rise, but there’s no way I can say now, looking back, that I couldn’t have been more effective in my previous roles if I were doing them again with the experience I now have.
@Ken - I think we agree on 90% of the issue. :) Great points. Thanks for the comment.
Ironically, I just had someone tell me today that I was not a good fit for their project because I only had 2 years of experience with Rails. At least they didn’t try to tell me that they had 5.
I agree 100% that “years” are not a good metric of “experience”. Yes, time is an important factor, but everyone gains experience at a different rate, depending on responsibilities, motivation, etc. I have no doubt that I’ll be a better developer in a year, but the person that has been in a certain line of work a year longer than me won’t necessarily have more experience.
I think its also important to distinguish technical experience from interaction experience (communication with others).
The former can be nurtured at the individual level (to a greater extent), while the latter is primarily learned though exposure. Leading others (with open eyes) will smack you in the face with what you don’t know.
In my opinion, a good developer has a healthy dose of both, with the bottle tipped towards the technical.
Read this today and thought of this post. Thought you’d find it interesting. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001054.html
@wharle - Yep, did find it interesting. Thanks for the link.
“He doesn’t have 20 years’ experience. He has had the same one year of experience 20 times.”
“Experience” is like Tuan Jim’s Ability in the abstract–it is the facility of learning from success. (Think about it, there are many more potential ways of failing than succeeding.) But that facility has to be one of extending and adapting success to analogous problems, not of riding a one-trick pony.
I agree with you to a point, but I still have doubts in whether my two years of experience in the work force will be sufficient after college. I’m getting my degree in mathematics and minoring in computer science and I plan to get my masters in financial mathematics. I still worry that somehow with this degree I could still be turned down from a job because of my work experience.
@Jonathan - I wasn’t saying that it doesn’t matter, but rather that it shouldn’t matter. It does not determine a person’s worth as HR systems often use it to.