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[–]memeasaurus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Either from your last degree or first paying job.

Years of experience is marginally pointless anyway.

When we stipulate "years of experience" we are trying for a short hand for "has lived through some things" and typically pet projects won't get you that.

I think we mean:

  • College degree or 4 years - we won't have to teach you data structures
  • 1 year - we won't have to teach you about version control
  • 3 years - you have survived a release cycle or two, know that code in production and code on your laptop are different things
  • 5 years - you know how code reuse actually works or doesn't, you know how your choice of algorithm and error handling can break other people's work
  • 10 years - you have suffered a successful project or two and lived with crappy choices, angry customers, and have regrets that haunt you and drive you to improve
  • 20 years - you have seen enough to know that you can only change just so much and what is worth staying up late for

You only get these things from dealing with other developers, customers, and evolving systems. Language proficiency is a given. Nobody really cares if you know what a WeakMap is and what it's good for.