Loading ...Years of experience or years of irrelevance?
In both blog postings, the authors argued that employers seeking to find the perfect job candidate requiring X number of years in doing Y (plug in your favorite technology) are simply asking for the wrong thing:
Requiring X years of experience on platform Y in your job posting is, well, ignorant.
When I was still job hunting, almost every job listing had a "X years of experience doing Y platform" type of requirement. This was especially annoying when you have little experience (like when you come right out of college). Companies don’t give much of an opportunity to show off your ability to learn or think. Interesting study pointed out by the article suggests 6 months as a cut off point for programmers to learn a certain platform. The rest of the learning is purely up to the programmers’ abilities.
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I think this “X years of Y” problem is because HR people are different from software people.
If a company wants to hire an accountant, or a financial analyst, or a carpenter, the “X years of experience” can be very meaningful.
But computer technology changes so rapidly, that anyone with five years of experience in anything is probably obsolete.
I mean, I’ve got 33 years of paid experience with Fortran. Whoop-de-doo. What has that got to do with designing efficient algorithms for modern multicore processors? Very little, since apart from the last ten years with MPI, all of that Fortran experience is on single processor systems which are now in the landfill of history.
This HR communication problem is even deeper. Actually, the resume, that standard data packet of the recruiting industry, is woefully inadequate for the software industry. A resume, a static, backward-looking summary, is almost useless for determing if a living person has the intelligence, curiosity, drive and skills to develop future software, which is what most jobs are for.
When I look at resumes, I look for the odd bits that say, “This person is creative. This person is innovative. This person learns new things.” I’m not at all interested in the laundry list of “3 years of C++, 4 years of Java, etc.”
Agreed, At this point its more important to know how fast and willing prospective recruits are going to learn. I think though if you are looking for a C++ programmer and will be sticking with it then yes, experience would come into play. I honestly work with a language never thought I would be using. Just my 0.02!
The better established tech firms do not hire based on language experience, instead they hire on intelligence, creativity, and coachability. Startups are even more so.
That’s definitely true and good that they recognized the fallacies of this myth. Also noteworthy if a company recognizes creativity and coachability when hiring, they are considering a long term investment in developing you.