On experience

Often in computer games, every next level requires more experience than the previous one.

Surprisingly, this is actually very true in real life as well. Engineers jump through MTS levels every year or so, a few of them get the Staff designation after five years, getting to Senior is even longer and only a lucky few get to Principal or Distinguished.

One can argue that this is because the space on the top is scarce, but I have reasons to believe that there’s another effect in play. The road indeed becomes harder as you go, and every subjective “level” requires more effort than the previous one.

So why does this happen? As usual with logarithmic/exponential growth, we should be looking for a network effect or a feedback loop. In this case, it’s indeed the network effect in play: if I want to increase my experience in the chosen field by X, I need to do so in all of the areas that are adjacent to my current experience. The deeper we go, the more dependencies we discover. Specialization is an ever-expanding circle of experience.

This is one of the reasons why many players choose to multi-class.