Exerience as an Indicator of Correctness
I’m still a young employee, trying to figure out the working world as I’ve found it from my own experiences and observing what my friends’ jobs are like. I work things out by writing and getting feedback, much in the same way that I propose ideas to my wonderful co-workers so that they will expose my assumptions and make me step up to defend my positions. I’ll probably write a few more pieces on work related subjects. These posts shouldn’t be read with my current employer in mind, as they are heavily influenced by the outside world.
Like many young employees, I have an interesting relationship with expereience. On the one hand, I want to believe that I have a fresh perspective on things. The notion that youth is valuable because it has not been become used to standard practices is understandably alluring. On the other hand, I am constantly confronted with the benefits of experience as my coworkers avoid distractions or deftly solve problems that take me much longer to understand. But there has been an idea bouncing around in my head for the last few days that just won’t go away – Experience in years is not an indicator of correctness.
People seem to have a basic understanding that data is important. And data often takes the form of numbers. Therefore, they think using numbers will make them look better prepared, more respectable, and more right. But, while saying, “I’ve been doing this for x years!” doesn’t say nothing, it doesn’t really say anything either. The speaker is really trying to depend on a pretty heavy implication; that is, “I’ve been doing this right for x years.” If you aren’t familiar with the person or their work, this is a huge leap of faith for you to make, as you are operating without any data. What you can be pretty sure of is that they have managed to at least stumble through a career path without getting fired a ton of times to the point where they are deemed too big a risk to hire.
What would help everyone much more is if the employee/applicant said, “I did X, Y way, with Z results!” Now you have a real platform for discussion, and perhaps more importantly, for trust. You may still be uncertain if “Y way” is the correct way for the current task at hand depending on whether or not you think the projects are analogous, but you know some important things. You know how that employee attacked a different task in the past and you have a certain understanding of the level of success achieved.
So, one problem with invoking experience in years is that it doesn’t tell you anything about the task at hand. The other problem with that exclamation is that it tells you that they don’t want to learn. Because even if they aren’t wrong, and their idea is totally valid, this individual is discounting the idea that they could be more right. They believe themselves to be operating at 100% right levels. Maximum right. And I’m sorry, but that is never the case. The individuals who are going to be closest to that 100% right level are the ones who keep acknowledging that there may be a better way, and actually go looking for it.
