As a little background, I\'ve been programming for a long time now using various

Question

As a little background, I've been programming for a long time now using various languages, systems, etc.

I've come across the old problem of a recruiter wanting to know "how many years experience" I have of C++. I'm a little stumped as I've bounced around it many times over a number of years. I don't think I can just add up the months/years. I'd put myself somewhere around the 3 - 5 year mark. I know it's a bit of a wide range, but I'm not really sure, with newer standards and libraries, the older stuff probably becomes deprecated.

So, I wanted to ask your opinion. What would you expect a C++ programmer with (i) 3 years, and (ii) 5 years experience (mainly on Unix/Linux systems) to be able to do? Perhaps, more importantly, what would be the difference you would expect to see between a programmer of 3 years compared to 5 years (and above)?

I know this is all a bit vague and the correct answer is, "it depends". But if anyone has a good opinion, I'd love to know.

Explanation / Answer

Years of experience have not much correlation with actual knowledge and level of expertise. Someone may have been using C++ for 10 years, repeating the same 1 year of experience 10 times. Another developer may learn many times more than that in the course of 2 years.

Recruiters asking for years of experience almost never have any real idea about software development. You may tell him you have 3 or 5 years of experience - that sounds like you are experienced with C++. Or you may try to ask back what are his expectations for a developer with n years of experience with C++.

The main point is to get through that filter in the recruitment process. In any software shop worth its salt, after the HR filter, you get to talk with someone having a real idea about software development, who will ask you what you did with C++, what actual problems you solved and how, what you delivered over the years, etc. That tells much more about your real value than mere count of years. (Or if you get an offer solely based on the number of your years of experience, maybe you should think twice before accepting that offer :-)

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