When commercial hiring managers say "experience" though, they don't count school projects, volunteer (OSS) projects, or career-adjacent projects. That is the so

When commercial hiring managers say "experience" though, they don't count school projects, volunteer (OSS) projects, or career-adjacent projects. That is the source of dissonance. You are right, it's just that you* vs. the managers have different definitions of the word. * also me sometimes, but that's confusing since I just used the commercial definition of the word a few comments above.