Everyone wants to hire experience.

Peek down the corridors of any HR department and you’ll hear the echoes:

“How much experience does she have?”

“Ten years? Great.”

We treat experience like a credential, a fixed proof of ability.

But experience isn’t static. It’s a degrading asset.

There’s a difference between ten years of experience captured five years ago, and two years of experience being actively built today.

One is archived knowledge. The other is living skill.

Experience is merely a by-product of time — but time alone doesn’t preserve it.

It decays when it isn’t maintained, updated, or recontextualised.

Some people gain experience passively, by proximity, not participation.

Others earn it actively , through constant adaptation, tension, and reflection.

And over time, even the active can become passive if they stop sharpening.

So perhaps the question isn’t, “How many years have you done this?”

Maybe it’s, “What have you learned in the last six months?”

Because capability compounds only when curiosity does.

Experience without renewal is just nostalgia dressed as competence.