> One of the biggest red flags in hiring is when people defer to tenure as a reason for anything technical.
You know what the great thing about years of experience is?
It's usually "I hold this $TECHNICAL opinion because it is the result of careful refinement over 20 years."
In some cases it is "I formed this $TECHNICAL opinion 20 years ago, and haven't come across enough evidence to change my mind"
It is VERY RARELY "I formed this $TECHNICAL opinion 20 years ago and dismissed any evidence to the contrary over the last 20 years, while still managing to retain gainful employment".
TBH, if you are seeing people from the third group often enough to use it as a heuristic, chances are it's a poor (or poorly correlated) heuristic that you haven't yet seen for the poor quality it is.
IOW, you are holding an opinion based on your experience, about others who hold an opinion based on their experience.
Holding on to this opinion might even make you part of that third group I listed above.
People who refine their opinion don’t use the years of experience as the reason. They use the actual reasons.
I have never encountered someone who just said, “I don’t do X because I have 30 years of experience and know it doesn’t work” who was able to technically justify their reasoning. It’s always a red flag.
It’s no different than someone who tries to use their rank as a reason for something.
> IOW, you are holding an opinion based on your experience, about others who hold an opinion based on their experience.
>Holding on to this opinion might even make you part of that third group I listed above.
>Very ironic.
You’re really struggling to grasp the point or you don’t know what “ironic” means. Basing opinions on your experience is fine. Basing them on length of experience is absolutely not.
The world changes very quickly, especially software. The older an opinion is on a particular architecture, technology, etc is, the less it should be trusted, not more.
> I have never encountered someone who just said, “I don’t do X because I have 30 years of experience and know it doesn’t work” who was able to technically justify their reasoning.
Honestly, I've never met these people you meet all the time. I'm sure there are developers who have 1 year of experience repeated 30 times, but I assure you that you are more likely to win non-trivial money in a lottery than to meet these people.
And do you know why? Because
> The world changes very quickly, especially software.
The developers who are still programming in COBOL, with no source control, for mainframes that don't even physically exist anymore, are rare.
> The older an opinion is on a particular architecture, technology, etc is, the less it should be trusted, not more.
"Throwing more people at a software project does not make it proceed faster".
Here's the thing - you're using it as a red flag. But your usage is itself a red flag.
You know what the great thing about years of experience is?
It's usually "I hold this $TECHNICAL opinion because it is the result of careful refinement over 20 years."
In some cases it is "I formed this $TECHNICAL opinion 20 years ago, and haven't come across enough evidence to change my mind"
It is VERY RARELY "I formed this $TECHNICAL opinion 20 years ago and dismissed any evidence to the contrary over the last 20 years, while still managing to retain gainful employment".
TBH, if you are seeing people from the third group often enough to use it as a heuristic, chances are it's a poor (or poorly correlated) heuristic that you haven't yet seen for the poor quality it is.
IOW, you are holding an opinion based on your experience, about others who hold an opinion based on their experience.
Holding on to this opinion might even make you part of that third group I listed above.
Very ironic.