On your advice I read the about page on his website (I assume this is the biography you mentioned). I also checked out App Academy on LinkedIn and Angel List. A

On your advice I read the about page on his website (I assume this is the biography you mentioned). I also checked out App Academy on LinkedIn and Angel List. Angel List even had the job posting for his old position. I still believe he's a junior developer. He didn't magically cram more than a year of development into that year. If anything he did less development. Out of his one year of experience some was spent as an instructor, not a developer, and many of his duties as Director of Product were management and not software development. In fact, he mentioned that as one of the reasons he wanted to leave that role. Some lessons are learned by doing things and dealing with the results. He hasn't been doing this long enough to see the long term consequences of any decisions he made while developing software at App Academy because those consequences haven't happened yet. Also, App Academy is a small company with about 10-20 people. Lots of things that aren't important with 10 people become very important on software projects with 100 people. None of what I said means he isn't intelligent or talented. It doesn't mean he didn't do good work while at App Academy or that he won't do good work at AirBnB. It just means he's inexperienced. That's not a bad thing but it isn't something you can change overnight.