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

  • @[email protected]
    18•11 months ago

    I hire developers with mismatched experience all the time - with a couple of guiding principles:

    • I strongly prefer candidates who have experience in at least two languages. If they’ve learned two, I can pay them learn the one I need.
    • As you mentioned, total years of experience counts more than most other factors. I can’t hire a junior who knows 4 languages when the role I need as an experienced lead.
    • But I’ll take a risk on a promising junior when I need a senior (guess how many senior devs are actively looking for work on an average day… I’m not a choosy beggar.)
    • For senior and above, I’m looking for evidence of experience with the underlying principles for the roles I need filled (back-end, front-end, security, identity, DevOps, test frameworks, etc.)

    Oh and, please do apply. If you make a good impression and aren’t the team member I need next, I might know someone who does. You want to always be networking.

    And any manager who makes you feel bad for applying for a mismatched job is an asshole and trust me, that person’s peers (like me) are aware of it and it is limiting their career progress. I just don’t like them enough to even tell them so.

    Edit: Answering a question below, my team is fully remote, though we have do have limitations around country citizenship for certain roles.

    • @ramirezmike
      2•11 months ago

      how do you feel about hiring remote?

      • @[email protected]
        2•11 months ago

        Technically I hire in-person and remote, but my team is currently fully remote, and I anticipate all future hires being fully remote.

        I can’t imagine new hires on my team wanting to drive into an office, just to spend the day on the phone and Slack and GitHub with the rest of the team.

        I would get an in-office space, for a hire who really wanted one, but it’ll be extra work for me, because our logistics folks don’t expect my team to need offices or desks in our buildings anymore.

        That said, I don’t currently have any vacant positions. Thank you for asking!

        Edit: Seeing this conversation is in a developer hub, I’ll take your question as permission to message you for a quick chat when I do have positions open!