The myth of experience
Good article on the over-emphasis of recruiters on “years of experience”, from Jeff Atwood. That said, I think this applies more to industries where there are concrete measures of knowledge — success in software development stems directly from knowing how to do something versus not, so a fast learner can compensate for lack of experience. In the investing industry, fast learning may get one up to speed on possible strategies and the mechanics of investing, but I think that neither experience or a sponge-like ability to learn will make a difference in terms of actual results, since the results are highly probabilistic. As far as I’ve seen, software does not function probabilistically, so what Jeff writes makes a great deal of sense.
