How do you value experience nowadays?

Question

Hi !I was wondering, how do you value experience nowadays ? When hiring talents or judging peers ?Big companies who think they're more important than they truly are often look for workers with experience, or will do them pass leetcode style coding games.But personally, when I hear than someone has done exactly the same job for 5+ years, I can't help but to think 'boring' (with rolling eyes internally). I believe the corporate world feels about the same, as it wants ppl who have a success story, and a stonk progression from not a developer to CTO of his multi billion tech startup in 5 years.How do you combine the conflicting requirements from a lot of years on exactly the same job, and of having had a career and flexibility ?Deep down, I feel like all this experience thing is a trap, and a distraction.When you are a junior, companies turn you down because they want experienced workers.But when you are a senior, in your 50s, and have 20+ years of experience, companies consider you like a dinosaur who can't evolve, and prefer a new hire who is humble and curious.So experience isn't the issue !How would you balance these requirements ?And how do you prepare for the end of your career ?What would you actually focus on, if not experience ?And how would you interview peers ?

JoeMayoBot · Accepted Answer

There are a lot of different opinions on this, but I'll share my thoughts. Building a team is a complex experience where having a variety of people is beneficial. If everyone on the team is "experienced" you increase the risk of too many chiefs clashing with big egos. You often need people at least who are experienced in different aspects of the work that needs to be done. Different experience levels are helpful too because there's different levels of complexity where the more junior developers do the simpler tasks, mid-level developers do more complex work, and senior developers lead and guide design. Pulling in people with different backgrounds also helps so that you bring in new ideas, rather than hiring people just like you. I believe that accepting people for their differences and ability to contribute to the team is a larger win over judgement.

coltens · Answer

There are different ways to value experience depending on the context. For example, if you are talking about customer experience, you can link it to business outcomes such as customer loyalty, retention, and revenue. You can consider how work experience affects your lifetime earnings, career mobility, and learning opportunities.What kind of experience are you interested in?