
Years of irrelevance - pius
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/833-years-of-irrelevance
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wallflower
Is it really 8 years of experience? If you spent the last 6 years doing the
same thing basically, it's really just 2 years with lots of sets/reps.. Years
of experience are overrated and I think HR folks are just trying to control
IT/tech departments by imposing their standard lingo/Y.O.E. requirements

In my first programming job, the team was busy with an fix-the-alpha/get-the-
beta-out crunch so they assigned me and the other new member a game project to
code. I did networked Othello, using Java Swing over Java RMI. The code design
was poor since I didn't know better but it kept us busy and we got to present
it to the rest of the team (it was a nice diversion from their crunch-time).
The code review was strict but good natured (as they knew we didn't know
better). But we learned.

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xirium
> If you spent the last 6 years doing the same thing basically, it's really
> just 2 years with lots of sets/reps.

There was a comment of TheDailyWTF ( <http://www.thedailywtf.com/> ) of the
form "Some people get 10 years experience, some people get 10 * one years
experience." There's also a quote "Wisdom comes with age but sometimes age
comes alone."

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jsmcgd
Years of experience gainfully employed in a particular industry can be a
useful metric but merely years of experience of a particular technology isn't
that illuminating. I have 8 full years of experience playing guitar. Can I
really play guitar? Nope.

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ivankirigin
I would say that framework != language. C++ is an example where I would trust
someone who has been using it for more than a few years more than I would
trust someone who has used it for 6 month (depending on their other
experience).

Using C++ under something like MS Visual Studio is closer to the 6 month
test...

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gruseom
"Years of experience" is a lousy metric. It only gets used as much as it does
because people (especially recruiters and managers) have no better way to
distinguish good programmers from bad. It's not only possible but common for a
programmer to do something for years, _badly_.

Would you rather have a good programmer with little experience on a given
platform or a mediocre programmer with lots?

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comatose_kid
Agreed.

In addition to having demonstrable ability (thru side-projects for example),
I'd also want a candidate to explain a technical detail or concept to me. I'd
phrase it like ("Explain an interesting technical concept to me - your
choice"). This would show me a) what they think is interesting b) how well
they understand it c) how good they are at sharing/teaching.

~~~
gruseom
What I've always wanted to do before hiring someone is work with them for a
while. It usually doesn't take too long to get a sense of how good somebody is
and how easy they will be to work with.

How good a new team member will be on a project is a complex question. The
only really good indicator of the outcome is the outcome itself. Giving a good
technical interview is not that great a predictor (although better than years-
of-experience). What I like about this strategy is that it eschews gimmicks
and gets as close to the real situation as possible.

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awt
Then again, it takes some people 10 years: <http://norvig.com/21-days.html>

