What's The SECRET To Bypassing Years Of Experience For Developers?

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hey folks we are going to the comments section for a topic today and uh this one is from fake mcf Falls pants which is an excellent username I love it um this one's a pretty lengthy comment and this is the exact kind of thing that's super helpful for me when I'm trying to add more context and this is uh with respect to which video was this on um the one I posted recently that was titled it's a trap 10 years of experience versus 10 years of the same experience and in that video I was talking about this concept of um length of time like so amount of experience years of experience as a proxy not an absolute measure of quality of someone's experience but as a proxy because people get are getting frustrated by like you know why does this job say like X number

of years of experience like you know I've only been programming for one year and I am you know a better fit on these teams and some of these people that have been doing 5 years or like whatever there's always these examples and I'm not saying they're wrong but I know that people are getting frustrated by this and my point in that video was trying to highlight some of these things but I I was referring to it as a proxy okay because if you have a difficult time trying to measure these things in an absolute sense then I think you should be trying to improve your processes for extracting and observing the value of a candidate it but I like I am not against the con the conceptual idea that's just called the concept I'm not against the concept of years of experience as a proxy

not against the concept of it but I certainly would not use that as an absolute okay so I wanted to get that out of the way this person was asking and I'll kind of go through their question but their their meta point is like is there a way to bypass the this perception this as a years of experience being a proxy so they go on to say I wanted to ask what's a good way to like bypass the proxy to so to speak so um they've been really into computer science and programming for a while learning about programming cyber security graduating as a computer engineer from a Latin American University and contributing to an open source game so they got a job in late 2022 which is great that's awesome they said it's very entry level um they said the intro test was super easy

and they actually got a boot camp too which is cool but the salary is okay for the region so I took it before I was assigned any projects I pivoted to the cyber security team okay so they're working in cyber security uh I feel like I'm the most versatile person on the team um and they're kind of calling out how in cyber security there's plenty of roles uh I guess like different you know hats to wear so to speak in terms of the types of work to do they got a raise um but there's still no low lower bracket of salaries and their manager said that they believe that they're a good fit for promotion but it seems like from this person's perspective their managers having a hard time of like convincing uh higher ups or others that uh the promotion case is good and

he's wondering uh actually yeah I don't know he or she uh is wondering if um if it has something to do with like it them being promoted recently so they go on to say so I've been looked at maybe job looking at maybe job hopping um but I think recruiters and managers and positions I see sorry that I will apply to see the two years and think Junior if that how can I sell myself um I mean the reality is like again reality is from my perspective this person probably is Junior I think we have a very false sense of um of like these of these different levels right and it doesn't help that at every place it's different so um I I want to I want to kind of chat through this and still offer advice so I'm not trying to like crap on

this person and say no like scw you you're stuck being entry level not at all I honestly don't I don't know this person it's it's impossible for me to gauge that right but let's uh let's talk about this in just a moment I wanted to remind you if you want questions answered comment below like this person did I'm happy to go through them or if you want to keep it Anonymous uh this person wrote a lengthy one here but if you want to write a lengthy one and don't want it shown you can send me a message to Dev leader on social media and that's also my main YouTube channel okay um and they I just realized they said right at the end of this sorry for the wall of text also throwaway count for anonymity awesome but yeah fake MC false pants that's awesome

stuff okay so you know this persons after um being able to kind of level up right they're they're under the impression and and could be rightfully so this is it's impossible for me to know this right which I need to acknowledge they believe that they are uh sort of prepared for promotion which may be the case it seems like they're saying their manager also agrees but it's not really panning out that way so perhaps this person is doing very well um 2 years of experience is not a lot of experience but maybe they have plenty of experience it's not a long time but they might have plenty of different experiences okay so um It's tricky because when we talk about things like software developer levels every company is going to have a different like numbering scheme or titling scheme it's pretty common in like big

tech companies to have something like like a junior a midlevel a senior and then beyond senior like staff or principal and then there's some like upper echelon kind of uh levels that like most people you sometimes people don't even interact with these people like in their careers like distinguished engineers and stuff um but the idea is that like there's a bunch of different levels and they're not always super consistent so um to give you one more example where I used to work before Microsoft we had developer and then Senior developer and that was it there was there was just there was no anything else and we introduced senior because we needed to start having a little bit better um of a job kind of differentiating some levels but we were it's a startup and we were like we know that once we start putting levels

in we couldn't just introduce like five tiers of developers and then try undoing that if we were wrong so we said hey we'll slowly introduce these things right then that way we can try to to maneuver more easily um so it was like we'll focus on compensation and the leveling like the company just hadn't really figured out they were working on it just like and I was part of that we just hadn't figured it out yet I think uh after I left I'm pretty sure they have like staff level and stuff like that so they they updated their levels and stuff which is great I think people really appreciate that kind of thing but this kind of stuff is different everywhere I would imagine that if this person has two years of experience and they're saying that they feel ready for promo and their manager

thinks it they're probably like at a at a midlevel right um I honestly say by the time people start getting to senior the scope of your impact is notably improving you are doing a lot more mentorship you're doing a lot more cross team stuff uh you are leading things so I would say if you're not doing those things and that's just like normal work for you probably not at senior and that's totally okay totally fine um so I don't think that this person's asking anything about how to talk to their manager about getting promotions and stuff because it sounds like they're kind of just willing to explore the other way but I did want to just comment on the fact that um because I don't think a lot of people realize this and this will be different everywhere everything I say I always feel like

I have to have a disclaimer behind every line where it's like by the way like this could be different this is just my experience it's you can't say anything online um from my experience as a men uh as a mener as a manager words are hard um the like part of my role is making sure that I have collected evidence to be able to put people up for promotion I don't have the final say though when individuals are more Junior right so someone going for their first promotion right depend depending on what the leveling system is you're at level zero and you're going for level one that's usually a much easier case to make right it's really rare that someone like a peer manager or like a my manager so the individual skip level would be like um like are you like I'm going to

question this like because if I am sort of going up to bat for this person and I'm like I got evidence I feel good about it if this person's at that level most people are like that's fine like we believe you but there starts to be more and more scrutiny and it happens pretty quick so what will happen is that people go to have these conversations again this might look different where you are insert a million different disclaimers here um from my experience it is always up to me to be able to go put someone up for promotion now then we have conversations with our managers so it would be my peers that report up to the same manager as me it's because a lot of the time it's coming from the same budget it's because we have a manager overseeing this larger organization and

we will discuss basically and try to level set so with the more Junior people like I said it's usually pretty quick no one's really going to debate it but then what will happen is that you'll have uh you know next level up and we're talking about hey want this person up for promotion you will have people like peers that will be saying like hey by the way okay so like you know tell me more about this person like uh you know I I heard what you were saying in terms of like why you think that's evidence but like talk to me about their impact over here or have they had these types of experiences and what they're doing is they're not trying to like they're not trying to on you and say like nope like you can't get promotions on your team screw you no

what they're trying to do is have an open honest conversation about level setting these expectations because they might be saying hey look like you're talking about these things this other person's talking about these other things do we all agree that even though those things are different they're still at this level I don't know if you can hear my dogs barking I think my wife just came home so they're going nuts um so these types of conversations happen and this is one of the reasons why as managers we need to make sure that we have uh sufficient evidence right because we have to be ready for these conversations but what happens is that the the more senior the person is the less and less it's in our control still in our control as managers to put them up but the less in in our control it

is to give you an example I know that for people um that are at my level at Microsoft like not only does my manager do the same thing as me where he puts me up for promotion but his manager will also need to sign off on it which I mean that's always going to happen but he's part of the conversation but then it also goes to a panel of people that it's completely outside of my team and my like uh sort of my skip levels or so it's not like he just signs off on it so as long as my manager's manager okay with it it's good no it goes to a whole group of other people and if I'm not demonstrating impact to them and they don't have visibility into my impact not going to fly so at that point it's like my manager

could feel totally content that I am operating at the next level and my skip level could feel the same way and if they get push back from peers at that level it's not going anywhere and it makes it really difficult again like to I'm just trying to share some different perspective for people right as a as a manager it can be really difficult when you're like okay like based on my understanding of what's required for these levels I'm working with my employees they're busting their asses they're doing these things I feel good I'm putting them up for promo just to have a a group of people that are like no we disagree and you're like okay well what now like I have to go back and have this conversation with this person that you felt was ready because they were delivering on these things and

now you need to go tell them feedback was this right I think it's really hard but I I think that people can appreciate at least knowing that you tried and you did everything in your power to be able to put them up for promo the problem is when you start having these conflicting messages like hey no like you need to go work on this they'll say well why did you tell me to work in these other areas why did you tell me to focus on this why didn't we address this right they start to lose confidence in you they appreciate that you're trying to support them but they start to lose confidence it's really shitty so I don't know what's happening with this person's manager let's pivot and talk about what they can be trying to do to demonstrate to other people outside of their

organization This Is Where It's Tricky I don't know if I have a you know bulletproof way to do this um because I think no matter what you're going to have this uh this bias of years of experience this is going to happen especially given volume of applicants and I can't stress this enough and again another disclaimer I'm not trying to support this as in like I think that this is all so good and like it's so good that there's so many applicants and yeah it feels a little bit more like winning the lottery just to be able to get an interview I don't think that's good I don't think that it's sustainable I think that it's completely unrealistic for any job position to have thousands of applicants and then have an expectation that we can go through thousands of applicants and try to find the

best one it just seems completely unrealistic to me you may disagree with that and that's totally cool but I don't know like and I don't I'm not in this position I don't know how I would ever expect or task someone with hey we have you know 20 job openings that you're responsible for and each one has like you know 1,000 to 5,000 applicants like go find the best one for each I just don't understand so I this is why I'm saying I think that people fall back to these or user proxies to these proxies of quality more and more this is I think why you see years of experience being slapped onto things because they're like we can just set the bar somewhere we'll just filter people out this is why I think you'll see more and more college or university of some level why

to just start filtering people out I'm not saying that these are the right things I'm just saying that they are things that people will say hm I think that will be a proxy for better a proxy and I'm not even agreeing with this so don't get mad at me just saying what I think is happening same thing with keywords on resumés right like we got to filter we got to try to get through the volume how do we do that well if you're going to sit there and read 5,000 resumés even if you're doing it by hand you're probably trying to like like optimize your time to get through them so I do unfortunately think it's going to be very difficult to completely buypass this and trying to be clear about that but what can we do how can we try to stand out more

first one is going to be trying to frame things on your resume in terms of demonstrating impact which may be obvious to some people but um I think what gets missed is that sometimes people write their resumés and they they have an understanding of the impact but they're not communicating it to people that are outside of the company so um I don't know if I've already said it on this video because I filmed another one right before this but I am doing resume reviews on on sorry I had to burp um I'm doing resume reviews on my main Channel Dev leader and so there's a playlist for that if you watch the videos you can see you don't have to watch all of them you can if you watch a video you'll see how to submit a resume uh that's currently not pay wals or

anything but it costs me an editing fees like 50 to 100 bucks a video so I'm like literally just losing money to review people's resumes um I will probably move that to a a membership thing it's not right now so fair warning but if you're interested in that um I am going through and trying to to offer feedback and one of the themes so far when I'm reading resumés is like I feel like the person who's written the resume like sometimes and not not everyone but I think sometimes people are doing a really good job of like hell yeah I'm going to write this in terms of like like the impact it's having but what they're missing is that like someone on the outside may not understand that at all so they might be using technical jargon or speaking about something that's internal um and

like they're not conveying to the reader who is not at the company they're at about why that's important you know I helped deliver this thing and it has such and such an impact but like okay well I don't know what like I don't know what that thing is like they're they're adding in this um I'm using the word jargon here they're using some typee of jargon that's not going to be applicable now in one example at least I saw someone uh hyp specific talking about this domain and I was like Hey like I don't understand that but if you're applying for jobs in that space like hell yeah if you're not the way that you wrote up this whole like section for your impact would be so good for a job in that area but if it's not in that area you are AB absolutely

going to want to reframe this to be more generic because as and I gave the feedback in the video as a reader of this resume and I have plenty of years of experience I don't know what impact you're having it sounds cool but I have no idea so you have to think this is a like a communication thing right you have to think about the audience so if you're applying to a place where it's very similar to what you're doing you can lean into the fact like hell yeah like I can talk about these Concepts and someone reading this really should get it but this person in particular was doing some type like working at a place with some type of research which is super cool but if you're going to go apply to a different job that's completely unrelated figure out how you will

translate that so that someone can go oh like I don't even know about this and I can tell like that's some stuff so that's one thing to think about here right this person's going to have a lot experience in cyber security from what they're saying here great this is cool cyber security can be applicable in different areas which is good it's not like it's so Niche that no one's heard of it but if you start talking about extremely specific cyber security things and you're trying to get a developer job you have to be careful about how you're communicating that because the impact might get lost on someone who doesn't understand those things you might get it the person it might not so that's my piece of advice there for resum writing and I think that you can test that with other developers if you have

friends whatever like and you you want to be able to talk to someone who's going to give you critical feedback on that because if they're reading it and they're like hey it sounds cool but like I don't know what it means it's just it's just not going to be helpful so that's one of the biggest things I've seen people messing up so far I shouldn't say messing up I think opportunity is a better thing to say not trying to say people are writing shitty resumes I just mean it's a spot to improve um I think the other thing too is like as this person said like you know they were doing some open source contributions I think people really kind of like sleep on this thing um not open source in particular there was uh I talked about this guy very briefly before I had

someone reach out to me on LinkedIn they went to the same University as me as a student there and um and he was like really concerned about how he can be trying to optimize to try and get jobs so he was telling me the stuff he was doing and I was like dude I have like like I'm a busy person and I'm like I don't know how this guy's doing all these things like it's nuts and he was still looking for more ways more things to contribute more clubs more hackathons more whatever so he has I think he has internships lined up at 3 uh I don't know how this works but I think he has internships lined up at like three different big tech companies he's just posting about it on LinkedIn recently so those types of situations where you're doing extracurricular things you're

contributing to open source you're doing hackathons you're do all of this type of stuff is just like additional experiences so if you're trying to in my opinion get away from the bias of oh it's only 2 years okay well how many people do you know with two years of experience that did these other things that contributed did to stuff like this that did whatever like highlight that because if it's just 2 years and it's work experience and you're like trying your best to try and talk about these hyp specific like domain things from work that might not land so well and it's not your fault right like you might be having a really big impact there so if you want to go to apply to other cyber security type roles or something adjacent to it then it might work really well if not it might

feel like it's really challenging so I think I'll probably wrap it up there um I hope that's helpful but you know ultimately trying to supplement your work experience with other things I think is a really good opportunity um because that demonstrates more breadth right you're able to talk about what you did at a company specifically with some depth but we can show more breadth of experience right more breath the person that watched this watched the other video that was the the 10 years of experience versus 10 years of the same experience so how do we make sure that these people don't think you only have two years of the same experience it's two years of you know of growth which is great but how do you show the bread this well and I think that will help so thanks for watching I hope that helps

and I'll see you next time take care