Why years of experience mean not that much.

I was looking back at my experience recently, and remembered one story that is a little bit funny.

I had never worked with CNC before, but I took an opportunity to work with laser cutting machines. It was interesting, so I took the job.

The Illusion of Expertise

I was trained for a few days by a guy with more than five years of CNC experience. He felt the hardware; he knew when to slow the cutting speed or when to clean the lens. He had a good sense for placing models on the sheet. But when I asked about the software, his answer was always "I don't know" or "It does nothing." I did not believe him. If the functionality exists, there is a reason for it. I asked other operators - three and two years of experience - they did not know either.

The owner thought his startup was operating at peak productivity and that the only scaling problem was hardware. So, he focused only on buying new machines and hiring more people. This is why they had an opening.

Finding the Flaw

After I understood the machine service and started my first night shift, I used my free time - while the machines ran - to learn the software. I observed the machine's work and found massive inefficiency in the laser head movement without cuts. Sometimes the laser head would travel across the entire sheet to cut pieces from opposite sides.

I began investigating how to minimize this wasted movement. The freeware software was unpolished, so its route optimization was poor. Despite the simple overall logic of the cut, operations needed a strict order: inner pieces or engraving had to be done before the main detail was cut, otherwise the cut pieces would fall and ruin the job. This created tricky moments.

The Results of Critical Thinking

Despite all these complexities, I found a way to optimize the routes. On some products, I achieved a 75% speed increase (11 minutes versus the previous 45 minutes of work). Simpler products saw around 15% improvement.

Using my approach, I hit my production norms within the third shift. Meanwhile, the other new hire, who started with me, did not meet the lower production limit even after two weeks. He rejected all my attempts to teach him these tricks. The older, "experienced" operators were skeptical too. They already had their paychecks and did not want to learn something that was not forced by management.

On one hand, you have a person who does not ask questions, has five years of experience, and works hard, but not smart. On the other hand, you have a person without relevant experience but with critical thinking and strong problem-solving skills, who increased production velocity in less than a week.

When next time you will write “at least 1 year of relevant experience” in your job description, or reject someone, think about this: does this relevant experience really worth that much, or are you just missing an opportunity to find a good person who will actually solve the problems you’re facing right now?

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