[giantg2]

It's completely normal. Companies don't want to train. You can even see this in the discrepancy between how many senior level roles are posted vs the low number of junior/intermediate roles posted. They want experts, but there's no real source for creating them since nobody provides that growth/feeder environment.

"one year of experience five times over"

I sort of have this too. I did become the guy with 5 years experience at one point. They decided not to promote me (I'm intermediate and was acting tech lead) and violated some policies to my detriment. Then they outsourced me and my team. Two years later, they shipped that entire sub-org over to another company they are "partnering" with. So I guess I'm trying to say that the industry can screw you whether you have 5 years experience or 5 single years of experience.