Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

I believe this has to do with the perception and signaling of potential.

Potential, when unrealized, contains more parts unknown than the known. You can measure some things - like GPA, school ranking, standardized test results, and so on.

If/when you do get employed, then that also becomes a new measure - and to some degree, lays the foundation for other speculation.

Put this way: If someone opts to work for a "C" level company, does this change the expected value of that candidate? If the candidate is "A" level, why would they join a "C" level company? The simplest answer for an observer, would probably be that they are simply not "A" level material, and probably closer to where they've been.

IMO - that's flawed thinking, as there are tons of variables, but it seems to be how many think. It's like with sports - often times top clubs will get top talent.

But yeah, back to the perception. Now you have a new datapoint - which could could drag you down - while your competitors still have the benefit of less information. These candidates can leverage their potential more, simply because the people hiring know less about them, and will have to take a larger chance / risk on hiring them. But as long as their other measures are ok, that might be worth it.

if anything the ageism goes in the other direction IMO - "experienced" commands a salary premium even when their actual skill and useful experience is no better than a fresh grad.

As advice for hiring managers this twitter thread is very actionable: stop judging people harshly for working their way up.

As advice for candidates who want to work at TrendyCo outside of what's itself a very elite "class" of people he anecdotally knows, it's not very useful: "try for that exciting job you want, and if you can't get it then, sure, take any job." Here's the problem with that advice: the class system is already in play before even your first job.

What colleges do you think fancy tech employers hang out at and recruit at? What internships do you think are going to get your resume past their initial screen? Things like "Microsoft stack, not relevant" and "low profile school" are already a problem for many.

(The broader problem with wanting to work at TrendyCo is that by definition so does everyone else so they're going to be drowning in applications and have to resort to some stupid/arbitrary process to filter things down.)

I am kind of living by this; I really don't see how a "menial" job experience transfers onto "exciting" jobs. If you want to do ML or program computer graphics, 5 years of writing CRUD code in Python will probably not do wonders for you. Unless of course before that you had scarce programming experience, and even then I don't see why would you need to sit all of those 5 years out. Seems like this kind of advice boils down to "dress for the job you want...".