Ask HN: If one works over 40hrs/week, can they claim more years of experience? If someone were regularly overworked, averaging say 60 hours per week, would it be reasonable to claim 1.5x "years of experience" with a given technology during that period? Say if someone often worked 70-90 hours per week and worked on holidays and didn't take vacation for 5 years. How could somehow reflect that experience on a résumé? Would it be fair to at least claim 7 years experience for that time? Thanks |
Work isn't linear. Overwork often leads to less productive work, so working (say) 100 hour weeks for a year might be less of a learning experience than working 40 hours weeks for two years.
Part of experience is in knowing how things evolve. Best practices change. If you only have 2 years of clock time experience but claim 4 years of "real" experience due to working 80 hour weeks, then that doesn't mean you know to handle the changes from 3 years ago when Framework 2.4 became Framework 3.0.
You also don't have a baseline. A lot of people regularly overwork.
Finally, if someone asks "when did your first use Framework" and you reply 2013 but your resume says you have 4 years of experience, then you will likely be called out for the discrepancy.
The years of experience are actual years, no subtractions, no adding. It's just a guidance and says nothing about actual technology experience.
A person who claims to work 70-90h per week without vacation for 5 years might attract some companies. Others will say the person has no private life and might burn out soon. Those extra hours work short-term, but long-term they aren't a batch of honor.
I think when it comes to work experience, a year of experience denotes a year of full time work.
Most companies just care that you know your stuff enough to be production so 3-5 years of experience is plenty saying 7 years isn't going to improve your level/pay/experience.
Keep things honest, I wouldn't advertise that you avg. 60 hours per week worked on holidays etc. You'll be better off getting away from that in your next job.
I've done that before and seen people do that for years and when things go bad they are still shown the door like everyone else. So don't be that person. Work reasonable hours for reasonable pay.
I'd recommend against doing that for a resume - you'll be seen as a liar.
As a general aside, every time I see a resume with something along the lines of: "Java (2.5 years), C++ (5 years)", I cringe a little. Please don't do this. There is something about denoting the exact amount of time you have spent with a specific technology (which we can generally deduce from your work experience anyway) that, at least to me, broadcasts a lack of confidence in your own skills.
I don't have it in my resume, I just spread the skills between an "Advanced" and "Proficient" subsection, but I've been asked at least once why I don't specify the number of years with each technology.
Most places (and probably all places that aren't incompetently managed/places you would want to work at) do not filter resumes on the basis of "Our posting said 5+ years of C++ and nowhere on this resume does it say C++ - X Years! Rejected!". If you break your resume down along the lines of "At FooBar Corp I was directly responsible for frobnitzing the blahblahblah with C++", "At Quux Labs my primary achievement was using C++ to cromlify the flux capacitor" etc, most places won't even bother to total up the years involving a given technology.
X Years with Y are a vague wishlist item that job posting writers unthinkingly cargocult around as a rough signal of whether they want a junior engineer or someone more senior. Don't give them too much thought, never let them convince you to disqualify yourself from a job without applying, and definitely don't cargocult along with them.
Oh wait, you're serious?