If there's one thing I've learnt, it's that "years of SW experience" is a downright shitty indicator of what someone is capable of. Facebook 1.0 was built by a bunch of Harvard undergrads with 0 degrees and 0 work experience. I'd take someone with 90th percentile IQ, a history of delivering professional results regardless of industry, and a drive to become a great SW engineer, over an average engineer with 10 years of SW-experience. Any day of the week.
Good luck with that. The next Google will be yours - that's for sure.
By the way: Mark Zuckerberg was a huge geek in is earliest years already and in no way he had "0 work experience". Have a read through the "Early Years" in his Wikipedia article and you may find http://www.letsintern.com/blog/4-thing-mark-zuckerberg/ interesting. He didn't start Facebook with 0 experience right after taking a 12 weeks seminar because he wanted to "change career".
