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3+ years doesn't mean 3+ years "in a job". That makes no sense. (Well, maybe for some companies it does, but you don't want to work there anyways). For some rea

3+ years doesn't mean 3+ years "in a job". That makes no sense. (Well, maybe for some companies it does, but you don't want to work there anyways). For some reason people can never get over that. It means 3+ years with a technology. It means don't walk in the door out of a Java college having used nothing else and apply to work on a Triple A game written in C++. It means don't show up after a weekend html course and apply for a job using Node/React. And before you say "well that isn't me for so and so reason", it happens ALL the time to employers. An entry level position does not mean you get to learn on the job from scratch or near scratch. It means that you are at least capable enough to work on small or easy problems and features and an employer or other devs can coach you along the way and you'll know what they are saying to you. That's all it means (to any reasonable employer).

arkades 9y ago
Their statements aren’t unique to tech. 3+ years of experience were not restricted to three years -with a technology-. I saw the same shit back when I was doing healthcare QI, and there is no tech to speak of there. In fact, they stated nothing to suggest they were looking at tech firms specifically. You seem to be reading into this what you want to see.
- StaticRedux 9y ago
  I'm speaking on the subject based on experience in my own field (I don't presume to know other fields). But I believe what I said applies anywhere. > An entry level position does not mean you get to learn on the job from scratch or near scratch.
  - lifeisstillgood 9y ago
    in most fields it means exactly that - or it means "there is a well known educational syllabus that you have already followed and the next X years are the well known practical side of that education. At the end you will be rewarded with membership of a profession" it works for lawyers, civil engineers and accountants. not for software engineers it seems.
    - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
      Layers and accountants have specific post-graduate examinations. Doctors and dentists have an extended education combined with on-the-job training. In the UK engineers can apply for chartered status, which assesses professional experience. The reason software developers have none of these things is because the entry qualification for some jobs is "I know some javascript", while for others it's a post-graduate understanding of statistical distributions and vector calculus. There's no professional accreditation system, no reliable way to assess professional competence, and a lot of the tools (and ideas, and systems) are hacked together with no formal rigour by people who like solving puzzles more than they like making things that work reliably.
pmiller2 9y ago
You are missing the point. The article is not referring specifically to tech jobs.
eli_gottlieb 9y ago
Bull. I've been using Python since high school, but very few employers I've ever spoken to were willing to actually label me as having any years of experience in Python.
- ugh123 9y ago
  Did you have anything to show for your work since high school? Any projects online? Github codebase? I know a Github profile shouldn't necessarily be required to count as experience. But if your only experience is non-work related then you're probably going to want to back it up with something tangible.
  - eli_gottlieb 9y ago
    I have something of a github, yes. https://github.com/esennesh https://github.com/esennesh
- IncRnd 9y ago
  You need to be able to convince an employer that your experience is valid, that you can work on their critical code base without destroying their customer base and income stream. If you can't demonstrate your experience through results that you've achieved, that's the same as having zero years of python experience.
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    Sure. Demonstrate experience how? Link them to patches accepted by open source projects? IRC conversations and emails? :) (now harder with all that slack thing) See people tend not to put patches on GitHub. (Some fork repos butit is harder for the recruiter to figure out the thing.) And there are only so many projects that are valuable at all. If you're expected to work on yet another worthless project (TM) then the recruiters should quit. After all, they weren't working on recruiting and PR projects before they took the job. And yes, they can ruin the company just as well. It gets even harder when you worked on a proprietary thing you cannot publish. Especially if it was freelance. Technically breaking or not things is a matter for DevOps not developers. And anyway it is mostly a matter of mindset.
toomanybeersies 9y ago
Maybe every employer I've talked to is unreasonable. When a job lists a requirement for 2-3 years experience, it means 2-3 years of industry experience. I don't have 10 years of Python experience because I started coding when I was a teenager. I learned more about programming in Ruby from 6 months on the job than I learned about Python from 3 years of using it at university.
BinaryIdiot 9y ago
> That's all it means (to any reasonable employer). There's the rub. Early in my career when I had little working experience this CONSTANTLY bit me. It didn't matter that I did consulting on the side or that I worked with the technology or even that I went to school and used the technology there. In my experience almost all of non-tech companies and maybe half-ish of the tech companies would require the experience be on the job at a company. Now I don't know how indicative my experience is. I don't know if this type of information is tracked anywhere. As an aside I'll never forget the one company I applied for who was looking for a developer with 5+ years experience in using .Net Framework... in 2003.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  Funny. Were they looking for a dev that worked at Microsoft Research?
nitwit005 9y ago
You're imagining reasonable behavior, but that's demonstrably not what's going on. We've all seen job ads that request more years of experience in a technology than the technology has existed. These are just number made up on the spot by people who can't be bothered to think about it.

arkades 9y ago

Their statements aren’t unique to tech. 3+ years of experience were not restricted to three years -with a technology-. I saw the same shit back when I was doing healthcare QI, and there is no tech to speak of there. In fact, they stated nothing to suggest they were looking at tech firms specifically. You seem to be reading into this what you want to see.

StaticRedux 9y ago
I'm speaking on the subject based on experience in my own field (I don't presume to know other fields). But I believe what I said applies anywhere. > An entry level position does not mean you get to learn on the job from scratch or near scratch.
- lifeisstillgood 9y ago
  in most fields it means exactly that - or it means "there is a well known educational syllabus that you have already followed and the next X years are the well known practical side of that education. At the end you will be rewarded with membership of a profession" it works for lawyers, civil engineers and accountants. not for software engineers it seems.
  - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
    Layers and accountants have specific post-graduate examinations. Doctors and dentists have an extended education combined with on-the-job training. In the UK engineers can apply for chartered status, which assesses professional experience. The reason software developers have none of these things is because the entry qualification for some jobs is "I know some javascript", while for others it's a post-graduate understanding of statistical distributions and vector calculus. There's no professional accreditation system, no reliable way to assess professional competence, and a lot of the tools (and ideas, and systems) are hacked together with no formal rigour by people who like solving puzzles more than they like making things that work reliably.

pmiller2 9y ago

You are missing the point. The article is not referring specifically to tech jobs.

eli_gottlieb 9y ago

Bull. I've been using Python since high school, but very few employers I've ever spoken to were willing to actually label me as having any years of experience in Python.

ugh123 9y ago
Did you have anything to show for your work since high school? Any projects online? Github codebase? I know a Github profile shouldn't necessarily be required to count as experience. But if your only experience is non-work related then you're probably going to want to back it up with something tangible.
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  I have something of a github, yes. https://github.com/esennesh https://github.com/esennesh
IncRnd 9y ago
You need to be able to convince an employer that your experience is valid, that you can work on their critical code base without destroying their customer base and income stream. If you can't demonstrate your experience through results that you've achieved, that's the same as having zero years of python experience.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  Sure. Demonstrate experience how? Link them to patches accepted by open source projects? IRC conversations and emails? :) (now harder with all that slack thing) See people tend not to put patches on GitHub. (Some fork repos butit is harder for the recruiter to figure out the thing.) And there are only so many projects that are valuable at all. If you're expected to work on yet another worthless project (TM) then the recruiters should quit. After all, they weren't working on recruiting and PR projects before they took the job. And yes, they can ruin the company just as well. It gets even harder when you worked on a proprietary thing you cannot publish. Especially if it was freelance. Technically breaking or not things is a matter for DevOps not developers. And anyway it is mostly a matter of mindset.

toomanybeersies 9y ago

Maybe every employer I've talked to is unreasonable. When a job lists a requirement for 2-3 years experience, it means 2-3 years of industry experience. I don't have 10 years of Python experience because I started coding when I was a teenager. I learned more about programming in Ruby from 6 months on the job than I learned about Python from 3 years of using it at university.

BinaryIdiot 9y ago

> That's all it means (to any reasonable employer). There's the rub. Early in my career when I had little working experience this CONSTANTLY bit me. It didn't matter that I did consulting on the side or that I worked with the technology or even that I went to school and used the technology there. In my experience almost all of non-tech companies and maybe half-ish of the tech companies would require the experience be on the job at a company. Now I don't know how indicative my experience is. I don't know if this type of information is tracked anywhere. As an aside I'll never forget the one company I applied for who was looking for a developer with 5+ years experience in using .Net Framework... in 2003.

AstralStorm 9y ago
Funny. Were they looking for a dev that worked at Microsoft Research?

nitwit005 9y ago

You're imagining reasonable behavior, but that's demonstrably not what's going on. We've all seen job ads that request more years of experience in a technology than the technology has existed. These are just number made up on the spot by people who can't be bothered to think about it.