The Years of Experience Myth

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001054.html

by getp • 18 years ago

27 14 18 years ago

nirmal• 18 years ago

This is very true, assuming you have someone willing to learn. I did a summer internship with Motorola once and did not know a thing about programming for phones or their environment. I was fortunate to have a professor who believed in me and was able to help me get the job. By the end of the summer I had put together demos that were front line booths at LinuxWorld and CTIA that year.

I encourage students that come to our lab to take on projects that involve skills outside of their comfort zone. I think it is important to broaden your skill set but it is more important to be comfortable with not knowing exactly how to do something and figuring it out anyway.

jkush• 18 years ago

Essentially: "smart and gets things done."

kajecounterhack• 18 years ago

And by "gets things done" -- it means STAYING ON TASK. Many "smart" new programmers have a tendency to stray off task...taking unnecessary initiatives and whatnot.

mironathetin• 18 years ago

There are clear reasons why this is true:

Here are my theses:

- People with lots of years in one field don't have the courage/curiosity to learn something new.

- without curiosity you don't learn a lot in life.

- People with tons of experience do a job for many years without being bored? Does that mean singlemindedness?

- Our worst programmer has 20 years of experience in her field. She has a tenure track position and cannot be fired. She HAS this position because she was the only one, who did not leave in the last 20 years. Since nobody else wants her she will stay forever.

- On the other hand: smart people are bored quickly. If you don't give them new challenges, THEY will leave (with few years of experience in every field they have ever touched).

My best guess is this: The HR departments are full of mediocre people who are not smart enough themselves to find smart people. Look around: the average rules.

If we find vacancy announcements that require lots of experience or a washlist of buzzwords, this tells us something about the company already: About who writes the announcements, about the influence of the smart people in that company and about how complex they are organized.

yters• 18 years ago

Good points. Reminds me of an article awhile back about why it's bad to hire smart people. Of course it's bad...if you give them the wrong job.

newton_dave3• 18 years ago

> People with lots of years in one field don't have the courage/curiosity to learn something new.

Or they may enjoy their field, or they learn new things and apply them in their field, or their field is dynamic enough that it provides new challenges, or...

edw519• 18 years ago

"There are clear reasons why this is true:"

"Here are my theses:"

Aren't these 2 statements conflicting?

wallflower• 18 years ago

It's good for people to have a job, even if they are not the best one for that job. It helps keep the framework of society together. Ideally, people could exercise their true talent and get paid but it's not always easy to get paid for what you like to do. Like Jim Rohn says - if all you get from your job is a paycheck, you are underpaid. It's a series of checks and balances - no perfect job is out there - it's up to you to make the best of it.

newton_dave3• 18 years ago

> It helps keep the framework of society together.

A joke, yes?

xirium• 18 years ago

Having two years of experience in an application or standard is a bad practice propagated by recruitment specialists. It takes a good programmer to spot a lesser programmer. (There are plenty of cases where lesser programmers look equally good or better to management.)

This forum is accessed by people who are above average programmers. Therefore, we'd be above average at spotting good programmers. Therefore, we'd be better at doing recruitment for programmers. So, what stops you from making a very good income from recruiting programmers in a existing company? Well, I researched this problem and I discovered the answer: you don't have two years experience in recruitment. Furthermore, during this investigation, I discovered that recruitment companies specialise to the extent that they outsource the recruitment of recruitment specialists.

Yep, that's right. Recruitment companies find it beneficial to outsource the recruitment of their own staff. And what stops you becoming a recruiter specialising in recruitment? Well, d'oh, you don't have two years experience. So, anyone could be a recruiter's recruiter - if they have two years experience. Based on this profound knowledge they can recruit or become technical recruiters. So, if you ever had the suspicion that recruiters just match buzzwords then you're right. If you ever had the suspicion that you could do the job better then you're right.

It is from this situation that recruiters demand two years of experience in an application or standard which has just been released. It is from this situation that human resources departments do likewise, even when they should know better.

The ultimate solution is to replace the industry with a small shell script.

daniel-cussen• 18 years ago

It all comes back to the pointy-haired boss paradox; the PHBs have no knowledge of tech, but still have strong opinions about it. It's like having a basketball coach who doesn't know the rules of the game:

"Why don't you stop dribbling, pick the ball up and just carry it to the other side?"

It's more or less hopeless, and this "years of experience" thing is just one more symptom of the PHB phenomenon.

factor• 18 years ago

Jeff is getting boring. Stating obvious isn't new: he wants to blog almost every day, instead he should pause and come up with actual stuff to write about.

The Years of Experience Myth

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