[jmathai]

I'm really not trying to be dismissive here...but I think you're pointing out exceptions and not the rule. The vast majority of software jobs don't need 20 years of experience. 5-10 years is plenty.

> Programming proficiency and programming/development/software knowledge are two different things. He may have _proficiency_, but does he have real world experience of working in a dev team? Handling nasty bugs? Working on legacy code bases? And so on..

He had everything needed to do the job.

> I call them farm teams vs the big leagues.

This was at a startup in SF acquired by a giant software firm.