Of course, experience is also an important thing but staying on the same job for several years and doing the same type of job for several years is going to make things tough with a fresher with enormous skills who is just getting started.
Well, having enormous skills would help in the service segment, but in product development experience always matters. More ever, there are times, when critical issues in production needs to be fixed in a urgent basis, and experience matters most in that case.
Absolutely. I remember a story that I read long back. A ship had some issues and about 50 engineers on that ship were unable to fix it. Then an experienced old man came with a hammer and hit it somewhere and the issue was fixed. The old man then sent a costly bill. When asked why is it this costly to just hit something with a hammer which anyone could do. The old man said,
"Yes you are right. Anyone can hit with a hammer. But only I know where exactly to hit. Hitting in the wrong place can create other problems. That's the power of my experience."