The integration of feature models plays a key role in many software development tasks, such as the evolution of software product lines by adding new features. However, little is known about the effects of the developers’ experience on the integration effort and the correctness of the integration realized by them. This study, therefore, performs a controlled experiment with 25 participants (students and professionals), quantifying 250 integrations to explore two research questions, following a well-known experimental process, and quantifying the effort and correctness rate of integration of feature models realized by our participants. Our obtained results, supported by statistical tests, suggest that the number of correctly composed models and the effort invested by students and professionals are different; but this difference is not statistically significant. Our result paves the way for further studies, considering which software development tasks students and professionals obtain similar results.