Combined Experience is Meaningless

I see companies all the time try to put their experience in terms that seems to make them look better than they are.

The way they often will do that is say they have so many years of “combined” experience.

I, personally, think this is a bunch of bull and you need to watch out for companies that do it.

Let me give you a scenario.

Let’s say you deal with a company that says they have over 25 years of combined experience.

Now, ask yourself, what does that mean? Are there 3 employees with an average of 8.33 years each? Are there 10 employees with 2.5 years each? Are there 25 employees with 1 year each?

See the problem?

But way, there’s more!

I have seen so many companies include their sub-contractors in this calculation which is complete absurdity. Sub-contractors have no loyalty and aren’t really associated with the company other than an extra resource.

Be careful in what a company says is their experience. Ask about the people. You are buying people not companies… or at least you should be.

When you look at combined experience you may end up thinking that the company you are working for is 100 years old when you only get 100 people with only 1 year of experience each.

Remember that stats never lie but liars use stats.