Our industry simply thinks that the more experienced you are, the better it is. I can tell you from my recent experience that microservices, kubernetes and the

Our industry simply thinks that the more experienced you are, the better it is. I can tell you from my recent experience that microservices, kubernetes and the cloud, in general, have made experience with old desktop apps completely useless, for example. Not only useless, but counterproductive actually, because you think you are doing the right thing. So, experience alone doesn't help. Why do people still keep hiring more experienced devs then? Many times because of bad hiring management skills, or because they don't want to officially have to mentor a young dev. In the end mentoring happens nevertheless even with seniors, though! The main idea is that a senior dev will be up to speed much faster than a junior dev. While this is most of the time true (especially if the senior dev has already worked with the same domain and with the same set of technologies used by the company she is applying for), it has some drawbacks. For example, not every senior dev is ready to change, to improve, etc. Not every senior dev has the same speed of learning and "hunger" of a guy who just finished his college. A young dev is typically more malleable than a senior dev that "in my previous company we did it this way, and it always worked, this is crazy what you are doing here", that is crucial to fit culturally. This leads to the second part of my post. From what I see, this trend is actually changing, and while it's sad because senior devs can bring a lot on the table (like, typically they are less hasty than younger devs), it's also good that our industry is starting to understand we are not just a bunch of people pressing keys and moving a mouse randomly - the more keys you have pressed in your lifetime, the better it is. More and more companies are "hiring for attitude", or at least they think they do. There is also a book about it with the same name, which I recommend. Shortage of devs, as someone said, is a myth. Such companies should start wondering why they can't find the right people. Maybe it's them doing the wrong thing? :)