"We only hire the best" is a statement made by those who subconsciously don't believe they project outward quality and excellence in their everyday execution. I

"We only hire the best" is a statement made by those who subconsciously don't believe they project outward quality and excellence in their everyday execution. It's as if those on the selling side believe that others see them as just-another-job, and they need to refute it. It's not a red-flag, but quite literally ignore the remark -- it's pointless white noise. As for uninformed biases about tech stack and experience and what-not -- yep, that's going to happen. It's fairly well-known that hiring is basically a broken experience, even at the very best of companies. Don't expect everyone to get it. In terms of MS stack vs non-MS stack, the reality is it's a hit and miss proposition. The OP's story about his colleague being competent in general comp-sci can be matched with plenty of others where the individual's competency seems to stop at Win32. My advice -- if your resume points only to MS-stack systems, get something non-MS on there. I'm in Seattle, we run non-MS systems and I see quite a few MSFT-based resumes. I'm ex-MSFT and feel I can gauge competency across these lines fairly effectively. Many companies are willing to give some a chance, but learning Linux on their dime-and-time? That's a lot to ask. With all of this, take it with a grain of salt. The common basis most people are told to follow is "hire slow, fire fast". In reality, this just means be super-conservative in your hiring decisions. Super-conservative leads to people "checking off all the boxes" in case something doesn't pan out -- that way they won't be criticized later.