Experience is of course a double edged sword. It helps good judgement in some cases but does the exact opposite in others as the underlying dynamics change.
It's interesting that some patterns do not seem to change very quickly though. I'm reading "This Time is Different. Eight Centuries of Financial Folly" right now. It's a rather dry empirical study of debt crises. The conclusion is that these crises have certain patterns that recur again and again, but each time there are people pointing at new factors convincing themselves that this time is different and loads of debt are OK.
So it would appear that a minimum of eight centuries on the job experience would be appropriate for any banker.
But even if, as in this case, experience would lead to the right conclusions, I would argue that sometimes it's folly that actually creates value and innovation, even if 3/4 of it is later destroyed in a crisis. The dot com bubble is a prime example of that.
The real myth is that older developers work based on experience. Sometimes experience is just a convenient excuse for laziness. Younger developers find other excuses for that.
I have 20 years of programming experience but I'm still struggling with the urge not to jump on each and every new fad that's out there, at least when it comes to things like programming languages and paradigms. What I can do way better than any recent college grad is to explain in a very reasoned, professional and well informed way why it is absolutely critical to use that fancy new language or paradigm now ;-)
It's interesting that some patterns do not seem to change very quickly though. I'm reading "This Time is Different. Eight Centuries of Financial Folly" right now. It's a rather dry empirical study of debt crises. The conclusion is that these crises have certain patterns that recur again and again, but each time there are people pointing at new factors convincing themselves that this time is different and loads of debt are OK.
So it would appear that a minimum of eight centuries on the job experience would be appropriate for any banker.
But even if, as in this case, experience would lead to the right conclusions, I would argue that sometimes it's folly that actually creates value and innovation, even if 3/4 of it is later destroyed in a crisis. The dot com bubble is a prime example of that.
The real myth is that older developers work based on experience. Sometimes experience is just a convenient excuse for laziness. Younger developers find other excuses for that.
I have 20 years of programming experience but I'm still struggling with the urge not to jump on each and every new fad that's out there, at least when it comes to things like programming languages and paradigms. What I can do way better than any recent college grad is to explain in a very reasoned, professional and well informed way why it is absolutely critical to use that fancy new language or paradigm now ;-)