What do you think about applying (or hiring) applicants who have experience but not in the specific stack of the job? I’ve found jobs in fields I’m passionate about, but I don’t always have matching experience in the stack. Does YOE matter more than stack or is stack experience quintessential?
Ex: 5yrs experience in C++ but the job asks for 5yrs experience and Node.js
Once you have experience in a variety of languages and frameworks, and you’re used to switching to the right tool for the job, picking up something new takes a couple weeks. Everything has it’s quirks and right way of doing things, but spaghetti code and bad patterns will always stand out.
If the engineer only has experience in one language, I’d be concerned about hiring them outside of a Jr position at all. But after they have experience in 4+ languages, asking them to learn a new one should be like asking a painter to use a new color. I would expect a good sr engineer to have used many languages over the years to satisfy different requirements.
And thanks to all the new LLMs, picking up a new language has never been easier. You don’t need to go through all the tutorials anymore. You can just ask ChatGPT to give you examples of all types of loops in Python to get a feel for them.
So if I’m interviewing somebody, I care less if they’re an exaxt match on exactly what we think we need and more if they’re capable of learning.