Death by Experience

Published on Jun 4, 2024, filed under management. (Share this post, e.g., on Mastodon.)

Hiring solely experienced staff sounds like a great idea: You get talent that knows their stuff to be as sure as you can to hit the ground running and instantly move the needle (colloquialisms courtesy of our industry).

I’ve seen hiring philosophies that go as far as only and exclusively hiring senior personnel, specifically senior developers.

That sounds fantastic—until you see it hit the ceiling.

The Many Benefits of Diversity

Why this happens isn’t hard to anticipate (though I don’t want to sound smart, I’ve only realized this in hindsight):

First, making experience and seniority a must limits one factor of diversity. There are no juniors, there are no mediors [sic], there are only seniors. Diversity is limited further, when other factors, like gender, aren’t distributed equally in each experience bracket, either.

Second, it limits career opportunities. Everyone being at roughly the same level means everyone competes for the same and usually more scarce positions a level above. There are also fewer people to mentor or coach, to manage and lead, and therefore less room to grow on the people side.

The diversity factor doesn’t only seem underestimated but often missed: Varying levels of experience and seniority can do a lot for organizational culture as well as for creativity and innovation. (The training of juniors is also a way for organizations to contribute to and take responsibility for the good of the respective fields.)

The career opportunity factor encourages competition, rather than cooperation. It can be managed to a degree, but the more experience is being made a factor and the more narrow the experience band gets, the less this really is manageable.

In the end, consistently hiring by experience leads to what I’d call death by experience—the accumulated wealth of experience leads to lack of diversity and growth opportunities, which negatively affects company culture, which together amplifies attrition, which leads not to death of the company, but of teams, which fuels more negative effects on culture.

_ Hiring only juniors is a known anti-pattern—we save on the salary side, but pay for the lack of experience. But hiring only seniors is an anti-pattern, too—there is something like too much of a good thing.

Update (May 10, 2025)

Later I learned another reason for seniority bias: optimization of revenue per employee. I don’t think this invalidates the points made, but it is an explanation that may not be as obvious as a preference for experienced staff.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m an engineering lead, guerrilla philosopher, and indie publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead and engineering manager at various companies (e.g., Google); I’m an active web and tool developer (code optimization, digital defense), a contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and a book author (O’Reilly, Frontend Dogma).

I love trying things—in web development and engineering management, but also in politics and philosophy, where I hold to one idea in particular: that we can only be well if we take good care of everyone. Here on meiert.com I talk about some of my perspectives and experiences. (Please share feedback: Interpret charitably, keep it friendly, but do be critical.)