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Comment by crate_barre | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, doesn’t count. If it’s not a full time job that you pay taxes on, I don’t care.

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.

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There are many (including myself) who worked professionally, and fed ourselves and our families.

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.

Why are you gatekeeping this profession?

Gate-keeping is different than maintaining integrity.

Why is sneering at a "secretary" relevant to maintaining integrity? Do you know they have no math or computing skills? Do you know they have no relevant background or educational experience from an earlier time in life? Do you know they were hired under false pretences lying about their experience instead of the employer knowing that they were inexperienced and paying them less, offering training, willing to take a chance, etc? Do you know they showed no interest in the subject outside a cash grab? Do you know the limit of their abilities was 'secretary' and that wasn't a job they took out of necessity for other reasons?

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.

Appointing yourself arbiter of integrity of an entire profession, is exactly gatekeeping.

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..

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