Hacker News Reader

Comment by chton | Hacker News Reader

"one year's experience 30 times, not 30 years experience." is a fantastic sentence and I'm stealing it. I've seen too many developers to whom it applies, and it's a great way to express that.

View on HN

An HR manager said this to my mother's face once. Please consider people's feelings before using it. It's likely to be interpreted as "you've wasted your career and/or life".

It's not necessarily a bad thing to hear something that sounds bad. Even after years on this planet people can rediscover themselves and start a kind of life they didn't even know it exists. Not telling people who are bad that they are bad is a concept I have a hard time to understand. Instead of worrying about feelings why not worry about really being this better person people can't complain (as much) about?

> Not telling people who are bad that they are bad is a concept I have a hard time to understand.

You might be wrong, and you should factor that in. Perhaps you're not helping people towards a bright new future of self-realization, just condemning them out-of-hand based on your own limited experience or misconceptions? (Not using "you" to imply you do this, btw.)

I really wish English would develop a pronoun similar to the German man. I guess we used to use "one" in a similar sense, but it sounds really stilted now.

> Perhaps one isn't helping people towards a bright new future...

I myself have the experience of overestimating myself drastically many times. Also there are a few things I got good enough in. Therefore I think, when you get feedback and the person giving the feedback is wrong due to their lack of skill, not yours, then you are not really hurt. The only thing that is harmed is your impression and respect for that person. When you are sincerely hurt, it's often you who's lacking.

Never the less it's important to think carefully before criticising others. You are absolutely right and I'll try to keep that in mind next time I want to tell someone how bad they are.

No it's not a bad thing. Problem is that way too many people use this as an excuse to be an asshole. Remember that no one likes to be criticized. If you need to do that, you owe the person the basic human dignity of considering their feelings and being diplomatic.

Oh I would never use that kind of language to somebody's face. It's blunt, and usable when describing (for example) why you wouldn't hire a candidate after a job interview, but not as a form of criticism. There are better ways to bring up the intention to the people themselves.

It is true though. Some of my friends work for huge corporations, their job title sounds very advanced but in reality, they are repeating very narrow task over and over again for years like a trained monkey.

The worst part is that most people don't recognize this, they live in the bubble, being proud of themselves they know it all. Unless they lose this job and suddenly realize they are basically unqualified for anything outside of their narrow field of expertize.

Either get lucky, never lose that job, so you don't get your feelings hurt when looking for new job. Or get out of the bubble before it's too late and start challenging yourself with new opportunities.

"One year's experience 5 times" is a very old expression. I first heard it applied to real-estate agents, and it was very old then.

I went Googling for its origin and the first link just took me back to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4627373

Are you one of the people who use it to describe serial contractors or "job hoppers", or are you one of the people who use it to describe people who've been iterating on the same project/technology system for X years in a single place?

That's the problem with the generalization: it's too general, can be applied to almost any normal career, and isn't really a good heuristic to use when analyzing somebody's work experience in most contexts.

I'd use for people who claim X years of experience, but haven't made any progress in ability in those X years. You can spend 30 years evolving, or you can spend it standing still and only moving when you have no other option. This kind of phrase is for the latter kind, doesn't matter if they're serial contractors or have been working on the same project for 30 years.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com