Not the author but I've been writing code on a daily basis since I was 8yo, and I'm pretty sure there are others out there.
With an early start, professional-ish work around 15yo seems perfectly doable.
With an early start, professional-ish work around 15yo seems perfectly doable.
When you're 20 and you say you have "five years of experience", most employers will think "that's great that he was passionate about programming when he was just a teen". But by the time you're 25, if you say "ten years of experience", most people will think that he's exaggerating or embellishing. If you say "15 years of experience" at age 30, I dare say that most people will question your grasp on reality. After that, impressions gets even worse rather quickly.
In short, as you get older, the less and less non-professional experience is taken seriously. And to be blunt, the vast majority of people will assume that anything you did as a teen -- even if you got paid -- was non-professional.
I understand that there are exceptions, but I'm not talking about reality. I'm just describing how people will perceive such statements.
This hard line stance is necessary because the line is being blurred constantly in this profession. You’ll have bootcampers come out in 3 months, claim all kinds of experience. Now you got these kids thinking they have 10 years of experience at 25. Just recently I saw a secretary on LinkedIn that took a data science bootcamp, and went from secretary to data scientist in a few months. Wtf?
I don’t believe any of you anymore quite frankly.
For what it’s worth, I also started “working” around 14. I had actually paying clients that wrote me actual checks for decent money. I never claim the years of teenage experience as professional experience, that’s quite lame.
The OP stating he had 10 years of experience, in no way, shape, or form, has any affect on you...whatsoever.
If their stating so, made you angry in some way, then your time would be better spent asking yourself why..
With what you said apparently being purely a reaction to a job title they had, it's not meritocratic maintaining integrity, it's "know your place" classism.
I agree with your various comments.
I would consider your teenage experience as experience because you did something, learned from it, and clients paid you (and didn't demand their money back) because you provided them value with your work.
Regardless of whether you consider your teenage time work as "professional experience", you have learned lessons and have built up on that learning.