Five years of experience… or one year five times?
A recruiter's question, asked early in my career, never left me. It separates experience that accumulates from experience that merely repeats.
1 min read
“Do you have five years of experience… or one year of experience five times?” That’s the question a recruiter asked me at the very start of my career as a programmer.
With concrete examples, I was able to show that I had built a genuine path of varied experience. But that question stayed etched in my mind.
Never stagnate
Ever since, I’ve always tried to avoid repetition:
- changing projects, tasks or roles;
- exploring and learning new skills;
- regularly stepping out of my comfort zone.
My fear? Ending up with years of pure repetition, without real progress — not in knowledge, not in skills, not even in pay.
A question worth revisiting
The distinction holds for everyone. The experience that counts isn’t the time spent, but what you did with it. So — what choices have you made to avoid stagnation?