I could not agree with this line from Hiring Technical People: Value, not Education or Experience more:
The perceived ability to create value is what hiring managers pay for.
When I'm hiring somebody, I'm looking for their perceived ability to create value. But when I'm evaluating a current employee for a raise/promotion or as part of the corporate year-end review, everything is based on my perception of the value that they've already created.
Maybe the person has little experience, but if they have drive and enthusiasm that can mean a lot. Throw in the desire to play with some of the newest .Net tools (unit testing, build configuration, code analysis, etc.) and my perception of their value goes up quite a bit.
On the flip side, if the person has experience but seems to have minimal drive and is not constantly striving to make themselves better, my perception of their value goes down. A developer can have all the experience in the world, but if they're not lazy and dumb then I don't want them.
It's interesting to note that the experienced person with low perceived value may have more actual value than the junior with high perceived value. That is, the experienced person might be more applicable to the job in the short term. It's the perception of value in the long term that can increase or decrease your rank.
I've found that I tend to spend more time working with the people that have high perceived value. I like this quote from What is the Perfect Boss':
The perfect boss pays vastly more attention to insuring the productivity, managing the satisfaction and tending to the well-being of those subordinates who get the best results than he does to those who are dramatically inclined, results-poor and/or costly to employ. He pays the most attention to those who behave the best.
For the most part, I find that these 'best behavers' tend to be more engaged in creating good products, have high personal accountability, don't need me to act as their babysitter, and consistently do more than expected. It's no surprise that these are usually the people that get promoted.