The Great Experience Hoax: Why “5+ Years Required” is Killing Tech Innovation
As a freelance software engineer with over 25 years in the trenches of the tech industry, I’ve watched with growing frustration as the “years of experience” metric has become the holy grail of tech recruiting. It’s time to call out this practice for what it is: a lazy, counterproductive myth that’s strangling innovation and excluding exceptional talent from the field.
Despite job descriptions demanding specific years of experience, I’ve found that these requirements are relevant to actual job performance only about 10% of the time. The other 90%? A frustrating mix of arbitrary barriers, missed opportunities, and a fundamental misunderstanding of how skills in our field are actually developed and applied.
Throughout my freelance career, I’ve worked with countless clients and alongside developers with varying levels of “experience.” One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how often I see highly experienced developers struggle with basic programming tasks that fresh graduates or self-taught programmers often breeze through.
