I've heard this old saw a million times, or maybe once a year for a million years, but what does it really mean? Nobody seems to be able to describe to me a developer with one year of experience ten times. What does this look like in practice?
My interpretation of that has always been something like "repeating the same actions over and over again, but never importing any new knowledge from outside" where "outside knowledge" means books, classes, blog posts, videos, meetups, etc. So you can "learn" to just keep doing the same thing incrementally better by just doing it the way way for 10 years, but to make significant changes, you need whole new models, thoughts, and ways of seeing things.
Now sometimes you may make a big leap purely off introspection, applying logic, empirical experimentation, etc., but that would - IMO - be an exception for most people.
someone who despite having been in the industry many years, has only learned more and more jargon, but not technical skills. So they sound almost like the experience they have counts, except when you put them next to someone with the same level of experience and stronger understanding, the difference is obvious.
“One year of experience ten times” is shorthand for repeating the same banal tasks over and over and never increasing your skillset. Versus “ten years of experience”, indicatig 10 years of varied tasks, increased responsibility, increasing your skillset etc...
One definition: A developer who joins a team, builds out a product, and then leaves for a new job after a couple years. They don't stick around long enough to see their code become legacy, and then get replaced.
