How important is it for software engineers to have professional experience?

[bobcollins@fosstodon.org]

@evan
For any other profession with "Engineer" in the name, one would expect at least a four year degree in the relevent field. To be a licensed engineer, you need at least four years of professional practice after your degree.

I have never heard of any guidelines for "software engineer," hence this question.

[dentaku@fnordon.de]

@evan Very important, but of course they must start somewhere to be able to gain the experience.

[halcy@icosahedron.website]

@evan Experience is certainly important, though whether through job or hobby makes little difference except that in the latter case, since you have less time for it, you're acquiring it a bit slower

[evan@cosocial.ca]

Thanks to everyone who responded!

One of the persistent myths of software engineering is that a young, inexperienced, small team can make a product better and faster than an experienced team.

I haven't found this to be the case. Most of the brand-new teams I've seen have been pretty shaky.

So, I'm going to say "somewhat important".

[evan@cosocial.ca]

I used "professional experience" in this question to differentiate from other uses of the word "experience" in software engineering -- especially "user experience" or "developer experience".

Unfortunately, a lot of people in the comments got hung up on the "professional" part -- whether the work was paid. In retrospect, I think "work experience" might have been a better term to use. Live and learn!

[julian@activitypub.space]

@evan@cosocial.ca "young", "inexperienced", "small". That particular constellation of adjectives would lead to a pretty bad product I think!

The important keyword here is "small". A small but experienced team will run circles around any other combination. Age is less important (but tends to correlate with experience, one would assume.)

[samir@m.fedica.com]

@evan too late to vote but my vote would be "very important", pondering that it could have been lower if you asked me in the past, mostly because with the AI tools now it's critical to have someone review the generated code. A less experienced engineer would accept the code as is without thinking of implications

On the flip side of arguments, I also less experience can be good sometimes, having a fearless team member can explore new ideas without the baggage of past experiences

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@julian Ha, good point!

[evan@cosocial.ca]

Another thing that people honed in on was "software engineering" versus "programming", "software development", or other names for building software. I didn't intend it as a major focus, but I did want to cover all the parts of the job of getting software made -- not just typing code.

[nemeciii@mastodon.social]

@evan polls are hard. Making words mean what you intend those to mean for everyone matches the complexity of naming things.

Make a poll on how to name these things.

What is programming comprised of ?:
- writing code
- tests
- communication
- design
- planning
...

Is a program truly ever complete?
- yes
- no

[interstar@artoot.xyz]

@evan

But does working on unpaid solo projects count?

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@interstar Sure