I agree with you, with one caveat. Why is one year not enough time to make an impact?
Isn't a key in agile development the iterated development? Wouldn't a year have plenty of iterations where a developer could build out tooling, ci/cd processes, ship many multiple long lasting features?
You can absolutely make an impact multiple times within a year, but the odds of those "impacts" being a net positive without ever having maintained the results is not good.
If I'm hiring for a senior or better role, I want you to be able to make meaningful, sustainable changes in large and complex systems. It can take the better part of a year to even fully understand many complex systems, so it's unlikely you ever experienced the full long term affects of your changes.
> You can absolutely make an impact multiple times within a year, but the odds of those "impacts" being a net positive without ever having maintained the results is not good.
Fully agree. I've seen a few FTEs come in, try to make a giant splash with changes, then leave right when their changes have any sort of major issue.
I'm still dealing with bad code from someone that came in and tried to do that.
