I'm a novice to this type of program, but I have been lifting weight pretty regularly since 2013. i finished engineering school and was completely untrained - that is when I added 20lbs.
Yes definitely. I'm 6'6" and wearing pants 31x38. I look like a scissor lift squatting. You should have seen how bad my squat was before I learned the low bar position. A set of 5 at 135 was difficult to complete. In that case my deadlift was more than 2x my squat. So I have a history of training, but with such a bad squat and no improvement in sight, it was difficult to find motivation to train the squat at all.
I was doing a pretty popular bodybuilding program from someone else that had "periodization". Basically I was doing the following rotation:
week1: 12-15 reps
week2: 9-11 reps
week3: 6-8 reps
week4: 3-5 reps
Although you are supposed to increase the weight each period from the prior (week4 increase from the prior week 4), It was difficult to make much progress in actual increases when you are increasing the weight every 4 weeks. I also wasn't super focused on grinding out the 3-5 reps. In my mind it was harder and heavier than week 3, and that gave me permission to not push it. So I was in the middle of this rotation when I found Starting Strength, and I just did my first week of Starting Strength when I got to week 4. I think that may have allowed me to start at a heavier load than someone who wasn't training at all. If you did all the lifts at 6-8 reps week 3, you have a pretty good idea of how much weight you can add and still do 5.
The program I was using worked well for getting bigger. When I found it, I went from 185 to 205 in 3 months, but I was eating a ton. But that was years ago and I was still going through the lifting program without eating much and more just maintaining.