I've concluded that the "years of work in [industry|<tech>]" meme is a fuzzy, noisy, unreliable and (close to) meaningless metric. Note I said "(close to) meaningless", because it is not completely. It makes the classic error of making an apples-to-oranges comparison. For example, too many people talk about "5 years of Java" as if they were talking about a 5 meter long pole. If pole lengths were measured in the same way as "years of Java", and you went to buy 10 different poles from different stores, each "5 years of Java" in length, you are going to be in for a nasty surprise. Humans are not commodities like a pole, brick or gallon of water can be.