Experience depreciates in the job market after 10 years

When is the last time you saw a job ad that said, must have 20+ years experience? I'd be confident to say almost never, even at the highest levels of executives. I'd wager this is even more of a reality in the tech and design sectors, where seeing 10+ years of experience on a job description is pretty darn rare.

Some will tell you that this is because they are trying not to discriminate on age. They are looking for people with abilities and competencies and that years of experience is not an indicator with capability to succeed in a position. Usually these orgs don't list any number of years of experience. Definitely agree that we should avoid biases that alienate quality candidates from applying. This has just alienated one group for another.

The issue though of agism in the job market has become growingly problematic not just in how it is impacting people say over 50 to maintain their careers and even grow them. It also impacts organizations to value wisdom equally to tangible capabilities.

Why Mestre N? in the title image? He was my first encounter with aged wisdom. He has his faults, don't get me wrong. No one is perfect, even w/ all the years he's had, but he is wise about what he is a master in. Sure, his muscles aren't as reactive, his balance as good, his power as strong, but his wisdom of his craft is near infinite--thus Grand Master as the title. It is earned. His ability to critique, teach, practice all aspects of his art form, of his career choice are unbelievable.

He makes up for his aged physical weaknesses, with a strengthened mind that works at near prescient levels. He sees what is coming before you thought of it as his opponent. He commands the ceremony of his events with smaller and smaller efforts that are almost invisible to all around him.

We have lost a respect and value for this type of mastery and wisdom in the way we hire for important jobs around us and in so doing we have accelerated the depreciation of experience well ahead of retirement abilities of those around us.

Here's an example I found from a recent job search.

This snippet was for a VP position at an established media company. VP! Not a manager. Not a director. A VP at a large enough organization that you can ignore the usual "startup title bloat" as the excuse.

In the first bullet 10+ years seems pretty low to have experience in UX for an executive level position, but what is worse is that you've already been managing teams for 3 years of those 10 and being effective and proven at it.

This is freakin' ridiculous. Unless you got into management after someone more senior and much better than you left and you inherited their work (congrats btw), there is no way you can turn around an organization in 3 years and use the word "proven" and an organization of any scale of size or complexity.

This stuff is rampant all over the internet. I believe this is hurting not just design (what I care most about) but more importantly the quality of the products & services we are delivering. Yes, I'm growingly worried about my own employability in an environment like this, but more importantly, I'm worried about how design is valued. When we make decisions like this, we are cutting the value of design out of product delivery and in the end that only hurts the customers we are designing for.

I've been lucky in my tenure to work for organizations where leadership had experience. A large depth of it over decades and I can tell you, it matters. They understand the total environment for getting shit done in a way that is beneficial to the organization, its employees, and its customers.

What we have done now is say, that experience starts to lose value like a fruit that has been on the tree too long. The metaphor is horrible, even if unconsciously surfaced. I hope there are still organizations that value wisdom in their leaders. I don't just mean the ones that have been giving out watches for decades and scores of years, but those that are starting up and building their culture today.