13 ms·

Had the almost exact same experience, but with Java. I'm a C# developer and although I have some experience with Java, I don't have enough to list it as a skill

Had the almost exact same experience, but with Java. I'm a C# developer and although I have some experience with Java, I don't have enough to list it as a skill on my CV. Anyways, in this interview I was being asked about Java and I answered every question by saying I don't really know Java. The interviewers were obviously getting annoyed. So I asked "Sorry, I thought this was a C# job?". No, it was a Java job and magically my CV had modified itself to say I had 7 years of Java experience. I told them I did not put that on my CV, I actually had my own copy with me and showed them that. We all realised the recruiter changed my CV. They apologised and wished me luck. Thirty minutes after leaving the recruiter is on the phone to me, screaming at me and berating me for not going along with the ruse. He said "Sure aren't Java and C# are pretty much the same thing?" Now that is why if I ever have to send my CV to someone it will only be a PDF version.

lwigo 6y ago
Recruiters will straight up ask for .DOC versions, too. The gall.
- waheoo 6y ago
  Never send doc. Always pdf. Next time I'm lookin I'm gonna send a jpeg for shits n giggles. Same goes for references, always, "available on request for the employer who can reach out if they like, no you can't have them. Go find your own clients".
  - andjd 6y ago
    At least do a png. JPEG compression is murder to text.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      This may be a benefit in this case, as sneaky edits to a JPEG full of text will show up as a difference in patterns of artifacts - original text will be compressed twice, while the edits just once (or once and zero if they save the edited image to PNG). Takes a bit of time and skill to make this unnoticeable.
      - waheoo 6y ago
        Ok fine I'll add a watermark too. I'll also take a copy along with me just in case.
- rjmill 6y ago
  It's common practice for recruiters to replace your personal contact info with their agency's header/contact info. I don't mind that. It makes sense. I generate my resume as a PDF from HTML/CSS. It's fun to see how recruiters handle that. I think most use image manipulation to insert their header. One recruiter sent me some image assets and let me add the header/footer myself. I'm sure some recruiters go too far with the .doc, but there are legitimate reasons too.
  - dfranke 6y ago
    Last time I applied for job through a headhunter (2010), they ran my LaTeX resume through an automated .doc converter that destroyed all the formatting and then didn't even attempt to fix any of it. Somehow I still managed to get some interviews, and when I saw the printout on the interviewer's desk I shrieked in horror and handed him one the original paper copies that I'd luckily had the foresight to bring with me.
  - yreg 6y ago
    What are these recruiters you all talk about? Are these some middlemen you contract to get you a job? Like an athlete's/actor's agent? I only had experience with recruiters who work for the organisation I'm interviewing for. None of this contact info / skills tampering makes sense in that context.
    - jschwartzi 6y ago
      Post your resume on one of the really big job boards like Dice or Indeed and you'll see what we're talking about. Last time I did that I was getting 4 or 5 calls a day. Most of those recruiters were from the same three companies and you could safely rule them out because they would ask for your SSN. But anyone who calls you and tries to establish a personal relationship might be worth working with.
    - the_only_law 6y ago
      > I only had experience with recruiters who work for the organisation I'm interviewing for. Where the hell are these recruiters at? I’ve retreated most of my information back because all I ever got was spam from the former.
- mnw21cam 6y ago
  Ages ago, I was looking for a job. I made my CV using LaTeX, and provided it as a PDF to the recruiters. They straight turned around and asked for a Word format version instead. So I converted each page into an image, and pasted each one into a page each in a Word document, then sent that to them. They complained that there was something wrong with the document, and they were having trouble editing it. I later had a job interview, and saw what the potential employer had been sent. They had re-typed it, and it looked awful.
cosmodisk 6y ago
The recruiter was in idiot but not to consider c# dev for Java job is quite silly too.
- halostatue 6y ago
  C# and Java the language are similar enough; the ecosystems are very different. A C# developer would mostly be expecting to develop Windows programs or possibly Windows server / IIS applications. A Java developer could be working on all kinds of different things.
  - DoubleGlazing 6y ago
    That's the case for me. I'm Okay with the Java language, but everything else about it's ecosystem is different from the .net world.
  - throw1234651234 6y ago
    This. I can do programming problems in Java, but I definitely can't lead a team doing a Java project. I don't what Gradle/Maven/etc really are. I don't have years of experience with how libraries, the API request pipeline, middleware, etc work. I don't know little tricks / nuanaces, like the fact that Visual Studio has to be restarted for local code to pick up new environment variables, why String and string are the same thing, etc, etc, etc.
    - soperj 6y ago
      Gradle & Maven are just build tools. They can be used for other stuff, but that's what they're mostly used for in my experience.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - faceplanted 6y ago
        I actually find the things _around_ the languages like build tools and ansible and such by far the more confusing parts of dev work just because I never know which of them I should spend time trying to understand and if I just want a runthrough for someone who can already program I never know where to look.
noneeeed 6y ago
I had a recruiter say "XML and UML are basically the same, right?". There's almost a dangerous level of knowledge among some recruiters where they think they know enough to do crap like this.
- DoubleGlazing 6y ago
  That's something I've noticed over the last 10 years or so as job descriptions get longer. All those new terms like React, Vue, SaaS, Azure, AWS etc. They don't really know what they mean. I was asked if I could code in Azure. This led to a weird conversation where I was trying to explain what Azure was, whilst he wouldn't listen to me and was adamant that it was a programming language.
  - ficklepickle 6y ago
    "But can you code in API? I don't want your life story, just answer me! Do you know API?!" I'm so lucky, I think I found the best recruiter in all Vancouver. He helped me get my ideal role and was generally kind and competent. Just to offset the horror stories.
    - nucleardog 6y ago
      If you don't mind I'd love to get in touch with that recruiter. I'm in Vancouver and would love to make a change. E-mail's in my profile. Cheers!
    - teucris 6y ago
      “But can you code in API?” “Sure, can I pay you in ATM?”
      - throwaway743 6y ago
        "Sorry, I refuse favors for my work. It's inappropriate and unethical. Plus, ass-to-mouth isn't really my thing :/ "
halostatue 6y ago
I fired a recruiter looking for jobs for me once when he created a .doc version of my resume (unmodified from what had been in the PDF, but it looked like _crap_). I told him that was completely unprofessional and I couldn’t trust him to find jobs that suited my targets or skillsets. Now, I tell people to look at my LinkedIn profile as that is the only resume that I keep. I’ll download the PDF of it if they want, but I haven’t maintained an actual resume in at least ten years.
vorpalhex 6y ago
> Now that is why if I ever have to send my CV to someone it will only be a PDF version. Make sure it's digitally signed and locked. I've had recruiters do hacky edits to plain pdfs before.
- chromanoid 6y ago
  Are you sure recruiters won't also circumvent this when they engage in such shady practices? Print and scan is an easy way to get around this.
  - delfinom 6y ago
    The shit recruitment house my company uses basically just copy and pastes resumes into their own branded templates
  - vorpalhex 6y ago
    That usually results in a drop in quality if they burn the pdf, and at least so far I haven't had that trick used on me. I suppose you could add some watermarks to discourage it.
Ankhers 6y ago
> Now that is why if I ever have to send my CV to someone it will only be a PDF version. This doesn't always help either though. I have only ever sent PDFs to recruiters for this reason. Yet I have still had a recruiter completely rewrite my resume and add false information. I generally keep a resume on me when I go to an interview just in case an interviewer had not seen it. I'm glad I do that.
- mysterydip 6y ago
  would digitally signing and marking as no changes possible after signing work?
  - Tempest1981 6y ago
    Some companies want resumes submitted as text or .DOC, for easier keyword searching perhaps. Or to avoid viruses? So the recruiter may OCR the PDF, then "improve" on it.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Why bother? Apparently everyone keeps forgetting that PDFs are editable.
      - chungy 6y ago
        It's really not made to be and with the exception of an embedded file that's actually editable (eg: LibreOffice optionally keeping an ODT version inside the PDF), "editing" a PDF tends to be a disaster of trying to match the layout with whatever text you are attempting to edit. Certain tools, such as Word and LibreOffice, make it a bit easier as most of the source text is in the document, others like LaTeX end up looking like garbage through machine processing.
        tempestn 6y ago
        Although if you're just trying to add a bullet point to the end of a list that would often be fairly straightforward.
dandersh 6y ago
Had this happen to me as well, only my background is JavaScript. I've had more than one conversation with a recruiter where they didn't understand the difference between Java and JavaScript, so I'm unsure whether this was done due to malice or incompetence. +1 to the PDF resume, if for no other reason than you don't have to deal with format issues on windows/mac.
toolslive 6y ago
just ask the interviewer the sha of the CV pdf first ;)
- sli 6y ago
  If I felt like I wouldn't get blank stares a lot of the time, I would absolutely love to use this. I'm at a completely different level of the industry than most of HN, so I don't get the benefit of (sometimes) interviewing with someone who is technically inclined rather than just a manager.
pjmlp 6y ago
PDFs are as easy to change as any word processing format, it is only a matter of having the right software packages installed. I keep remembering everyone that thinks PDFs are magically safer than Word.
- BenjiWiebe 6y ago
  Not as easy, no. OCR is needed if the PDF wasn't saved with embedded text/a document file.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Might be, yet I bet Acrobat can handle most of the ones that get sent around.
NicoJuicy 6y ago
The syntax of c# and java are quite similar. But the ecosystem is way different, i think the recruiter mimicked someone else and thought c# is equivalent to java, while it's not.
swalsh 6y ago
> Thirty minutes after leaving the recruiter is on the phone to me, screaming at me I once refused to let a recruiter send my resume to this company because I thought the company was slimey (it looked like they used SEO to trick people who were actually looking for a free government service to use their paid service instead... but it was purposely ambigious they were not affiliated with the government) The recuriter started getting angry at me, so I made it clear I would not work with someone who didn't respect me, and hung up. A recruiter who views you as simply a product to sell is not worth keeping. There's a million recruiters.
- xdavidliu 6y ago
  > it looked like they used SEO to trick people who were actually looking for a free government service to use their paid service instead... but it was purposely ambigious they were not affiliated with the government healthcare.org? (the real one is healthcare.gov)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mickotron 6y ago
  A recruiter called me out of the blue years ago when I was looking for a job, probably from LinkedIn. I didn't know much about contracting so I was just curious as to what he could do for me. He called me once screaming at me because he thought I was not being exclusive to him with regards to a particular job. I told him quickly where to go, it was him who called me, grow up and stop wasting my time. To this day I have no idea what he was smoking that day cause I'm as bewildered now as I was then about what he was on about.
gtk40 6y ago
> Now that is why if I ever have to send my CV to someone it will only be a PDF version. Although it depends how you generate it how easy it will be, Word has built in support for editing PDFs. So does LibreOffice (in Draw I believe). It's pretty accessible to non-technical people without expensive software to edit PDFs nowadays.
jedmeyers 6y ago
> Anyways, in this interview I was being asked about Java and I answered every question by saying I don't really know Java. The interviewers were obviously getting annoyed. So I asked "Sorry, I thought this was a C# job?". Are those types of exchanges still take place at the interviews? I was lucky enough to avoid them, having worked at companies that are able to afford to spend extra time training people. Those types of discussions often remind me of the Linus' quote: "Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships."
- DoubleGlazing 6y ago
  Pretty much every interview I've had has been like that. Asking lots of exam style question about the language/platform. In my experience most employers say they want good programmers, but in reality they want quick programmers. People who can get the product out the door ASAP. And that's why I wouldn't take a Java job without learning the ecosystem first. Even if they promise training, there's a high chance of them reneging. So I would end up in a stressful situation trying to learn as I go. I'd rather stick with what I know and what I'm good at.
excitom 6y ago
News flash: You can open a PDF with Word and edit it.
monoideism 6y ago
> "Sure aren't Java and C# are pretty much the same thing?" While it was extremely unethical for him to change your CV, Java and C# are indeed very similar, to the point that most organizations use devs with that background interchangeably. If that company really ruled you out because you had 7 years of C# experience, and not 7 years of Java experience, you likely dodged a bullet.
- tener 6y ago
  Meh, sure a C# dev can do Java and get up to speed with it pretty quickly, but certainly a proper Java dev will be more productive immediately. Knowledge of frameworks is a real skill for example.
  - flukus 6y ago
    The frameworks are typically very analogous between the two as well, it takes a while to learn them but in the meantime it's googling "how to do concept x in framework y". Apart from the initial project setup you're also generally spending a lot less time dealing with the framework and instead looking at other code.
    - tener 6y ago
      Analogous != same. The differences can easily cost a large fraction of productivity for a certain period of time (a couple of months?). Would I hire a bright candidate that require retraining given absence of those that do not? Quite likely yes. Would I be pissed at false advertising? Again, yes.
- CodeMage 6y ago
  > If that company really ruled you out because you had 7 years of C# experience, and not 7 years of Java experience, you likely dodged a bullet. Respectfully, I disagree. Things that you should learn over 7 years of experience go far beyond learning the language itself or the fundamentals of its standard library. We're talking about two very different ecosystems.
agilob 6y ago
> Had the almost exact same experience, but with Java. I'm a C# developer and although I have some experience with Java >Sure aren't Java and C# are pretty much the same thing? Yea, hear that from the other side: I went for interview at Amazon (~2017?) for Java backend engineer. During the interview they were asking me only JavaScript questions from what looked like a standardized form to filter out phonies. I obviously failed the interview. Was told if this isn't the job I wanted I should apply for a different job and come back when I get some more experience in... Java. The recruiter had absolutely no idea that Java isn't JS and was interrupting me when I tried to explain the situation. I really should have applied for a job I wanted. One of the worst interviews I event went to. Java devs with wide recruiters network got such emails weekly, calls monthly, until TypeScript came to rescue.
LdSGSgvupDV 6y ago
Weird. The recruiter did not show you the job description? Whenever there is a job sent by recruiter, I also ask for JD and the range of annual compensation. For the JD part, it is quite often that it is just a copy-paste from some employment website.
nullserver 6y ago
This is why I don’t work with recruiters any more.

lwigo 6y ago

Recruiters will straight up ask for .DOC versions, too. The gall.

waheoo 6y ago
Never send doc. Always pdf. Next time I'm lookin I'm gonna send a jpeg for shits n giggles. Same goes for references, always, "available on request for the employer who can reach out if they like, no you can't have them. Go find your own clients".
- andjd 6y ago
  At least do a png. JPEG compression is murder to text.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    This may be a benefit in this case, as sneaky edits to a JPEG full of text will show up as a difference in patterns of artifacts - original text will be compressed twice, while the edits just once (or once and zero if they save the edited image to PNG). Takes a bit of time and skill to make this unnoticeable.
    - waheoo 6y ago
      Ok fine I'll add a watermark too. I'll also take a copy along with me just in case.
rjmill 6y ago
It's common practice for recruiters to replace your personal contact info with their agency's header/contact info. I don't mind that. It makes sense. I generate my resume as a PDF from HTML/CSS. It's fun to see how recruiters handle that. I think most use image manipulation to insert their header. One recruiter sent me some image assets and let me add the header/footer myself. I'm sure some recruiters go too far with the .doc, but there are legitimate reasons too.
- dfranke 6y ago
  Last time I applied for job through a headhunter (2010), they ran my LaTeX resume through an automated .doc converter that destroyed all the formatting and then didn't even attempt to fix any of it. Somehow I still managed to get some interviews, and when I saw the printout on the interviewer's desk I shrieked in horror and handed him one the original paper copies that I'd luckily had the foresight to bring with me.
- yreg 6y ago
  What are these recruiters you all talk about? Are these some middlemen you contract to get you a job? Like an athlete's/actor's agent? I only had experience with recruiters who work for the organisation I'm interviewing for. None of this contact info / skills tampering makes sense in that context.
  - jschwartzi 6y ago
    Post your resume on one of the really big job boards like Dice or Indeed and you'll see what we're talking about. Last time I did that I was getting 4 or 5 calls a day. Most of those recruiters were from the same three companies and you could safely rule them out because they would ask for your SSN. But anyone who calls you and tries to establish a personal relationship might be worth working with.
  - the_only_law 6y ago
    > I only had experience with recruiters who work for the organisation I'm interviewing for. Where the hell are these recruiters at? I’ve retreated most of my information back because all I ever got was spam from the former.
mnw21cam 6y ago
Ages ago, I was looking for a job. I made my CV using LaTeX, and provided it as a PDF to the recruiters. They straight turned around and asked for a Word format version instead. So I converted each page into an image, and pasted each one into a page each in a Word document, then sent that to them. They complained that there was something wrong with the document, and they were having trouble editing it. I later had a job interview, and saw what the potential employer had been sent. They had re-typed it, and it looked awful.

cosmodisk 6y ago

The recruiter was in idiot but not to consider c# dev for Java job is quite silly too.

halostatue 6y ago
C# and Java the language are similar enough; the ecosystems are very different. A C# developer would mostly be expecting to develop Windows programs or possibly Windows server / IIS applications. A Java developer could be working on all kinds of different things.
- DoubleGlazing 6y ago
  That's the case for me. I'm Okay with the Java language, but everything else about it's ecosystem is different from the .net world.
- throw1234651234 6y ago
  This. I can do programming problems in Java, but I definitely can't lead a team doing a Java project. I don't what Gradle/Maven/etc really are. I don't have years of experience with how libraries, the API request pipeline, middleware, etc work. I don't know little tricks / nuanaces, like the fact that Visual Studio has to be restarted for local code to pick up new environment variables, why String and string are the same thing, etc, etc, etc.
  - soperj 6y ago
    Gradle & Maven are just build tools. They can be used for other stuff, but that's what they're mostly used for in my experience.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - faceplanted 6y ago
      I actually find the things _around_ the languages like build tools and ansible and such by far the more confusing parts of dev work just because I never know which of them I should spend time trying to understand and if I just want a runthrough for someone who can already program I never know where to look.

noneeeed 6y ago

I had a recruiter say "XML and UML are basically the same, right?". There's almost a dangerous level of knowledge among some recruiters where they think they know enough to do crap like this.

DoubleGlazing 6y ago
That's something I've noticed over the last 10 years or so as job descriptions get longer. All those new terms like React, Vue, SaaS, Azure, AWS etc. They don't really know what they mean. I was asked if I could code in Azure. This led to a weird conversation where I was trying to explain what Azure was, whilst he wouldn't listen to me and was adamant that it was a programming language.
- ficklepickle 6y ago
  "But can you code in API? I don't want your life story, just answer me! Do you know API?!" I'm so lucky, I think I found the best recruiter in all Vancouver. He helped me get my ideal role and was generally kind and competent. Just to offset the horror stories.
  - nucleardog 6y ago
    If you don't mind I'd love to get in touch with that recruiter. I'm in Vancouver and would love to make a change. E-mail's in my profile. Cheers!
  - teucris 6y ago
    “But can you code in API?” “Sure, can I pay you in ATM?”
    - throwaway743 6y ago
      "Sorry, I refuse favors for my work. It's inappropriate and unethical. Plus, ass-to-mouth isn't really my thing :/ "

halostatue 6y ago

I fired a recruiter looking for jobs for me once when he created a .doc version of my resume (unmodified from what had been in the PDF, but it looked like _crap_). I told him that was completely unprofessional and I couldn’t trust him to find jobs that suited my targets or skillsets. Now, I tell people to look at my LinkedIn profile as that is the only resume that I keep. I’ll download the PDF of it if they want, but I haven’t maintained an actual resume in at least ten years.

vorpalhex 6y ago

> Now that is why if I ever have to send my CV to someone it will only be a PDF version. Make sure it's digitally signed and locked. I've had recruiters do hacky edits to plain pdfs before.

chromanoid 6y ago
Are you sure recruiters won't also circumvent this when they engage in such shady practices? Print and scan is an easy way to get around this.
- delfinom 6y ago
  The shit recruitment house my company uses basically just copy and pastes resumes into their own branded templates
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  That usually results in a drop in quality if they burn the pdf, and at least so far I haven't had that trick used on me. I suppose you could add some watermarks to discourage it.

Ankhers 6y ago

> Now that is why if I ever have to send my CV to someone it will only be a PDF version. This doesn't always help either though. I have only ever sent PDFs to recruiters for this reason. Yet I have still had a recruiter completely rewrite my resume and add false information. I generally keep a resume on me when I go to an interview just in case an interviewer had not seen it. I'm glad I do that.

mysterydip 6y ago
would digitally signing and marking as no changes possible after signing work?
- Tempest1981 6y ago
  Some companies want resumes submitted as text or .DOC, for easier keyword searching perhaps. Or to avoid viruses? So the recruiter may OCR the PDF, then "improve" on it.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Why bother? Apparently everyone keeps forgetting that PDFs are editable.
    - chungy 6y ago
      It's really not made to be and with the exception of an embedded file that's actually editable (eg: LibreOffice optionally keeping an ODT version inside the PDF), "editing" a PDF tends to be a disaster of trying to match the layout with whatever text you are attempting to edit. Certain tools, such as Word and LibreOffice, make it a bit easier as most of the source text is in the document, others like LaTeX end up looking like garbage through machine processing.
      - tempestn 6y ago
        Although if you're just trying to add a bullet point to the end of a list that would often be fairly straightforward.

dandersh 6y ago

Had this happen to me as well, only my background is JavaScript. I've had more than one conversation with a recruiter where they didn't understand the difference between Java and JavaScript, so I'm unsure whether this was done due to malice or incompetence. +1 to the PDF resume, if for no other reason than you don't have to deal with format issues on windows/mac.

toolslive 6y ago

just ask the interviewer the sha of the CV pdf first ;)

sli 6y ago
If I felt like I wouldn't get blank stares a lot of the time, I would absolutely love to use this. I'm at a completely different level of the industry than most of HN, so I don't get the benefit of (sometimes) interviewing with someone who is technically inclined rather than just a manager.

pjmlp 6y ago

PDFs are as easy to change as any word processing format, it is only a matter of having the right software packages installed. I keep remembering everyone that thinks PDFs are magically safer than Word.

BenjiWiebe 6y ago
Not as easy, no. OCR is needed if the PDF wasn't saved with embedded text/a document file.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Might be, yet I bet Acrobat can handle most of the ones that get sent around.

NicoJuicy 6y ago

The syntax of c# and java are quite similar. But the ecosystem is way different, i think the recruiter mimicked someone else and thought c# is equivalent to java, while it's not.

swalsh 6y ago

> Thirty minutes after leaving the recruiter is on the phone to me, screaming at me I once refused to let a recruiter send my resume to this company because I thought the company was slimey (it looked like they used SEO to trick people who were actually looking for a free government service to use their paid service instead... but it was purposely ambigious they were not affiliated with the government) The recuriter started getting angry at me, so I made it clear I would not work with someone who didn't respect me, and hung up. A recruiter who views you as simply a product to sell is not worth keeping. There's a million recruiters.

xdavidliu 6y ago
> it looked like they used SEO to trick people who were actually looking for a free government service to use their paid service instead... but it was purposely ambigious they were not affiliated with the government healthcare.org? (the real one is healthcare.gov)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mickotron 6y ago
A recruiter called me out of the blue years ago when I was looking for a job, probably from LinkedIn. I didn't know much about contracting so I was just curious as to what he could do for me. He called me once screaming at me because he thought I was not being exclusive to him with regards to a particular job. I told him quickly where to go, it was him who called me, grow up and stop wasting my time. To this day I have no idea what he was smoking that day cause I'm as bewildered now as I was then about what he was on about.

gtk40 6y ago

> Now that is why if I ever have to send my CV to someone it will only be a PDF version. Although it depends how you generate it how easy it will be, Word has built in support for editing PDFs. So does LibreOffice (in Draw I believe). It's pretty accessible to non-technical people without expensive software to edit PDFs nowadays.

jedmeyers 6y ago

> Anyways, in this interview I was being asked about Java and I answered every question by saying I don't really know Java. The interviewers were obviously getting annoyed. So I asked "Sorry, I thought this was a C# job?". Are those types of exchanges still take place at the interviews? I was lucky enough to avoid them, having worked at companies that are able to afford to spend extra time training people. Those types of discussions often remind me of the Linus' quote: "Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships."

DoubleGlazing 6y ago
Pretty much every interview I've had has been like that. Asking lots of exam style question about the language/platform. In my experience most employers say they want good programmers, but in reality they want quick programmers. People who can get the product out the door ASAP. And that's why I wouldn't take a Java job without learning the ecosystem first. Even if they promise training, there's a high chance of them reneging. So I would end up in a stressful situation trying to learn as I go. I'd rather stick with what I know and what I'm good at.

excitom 6y ago

News flash: You can open a PDF with Word and edit it.

monoideism 6y ago

> "Sure aren't Java and C# are pretty much the same thing?" While it was extremely unethical for him to change your CV, Java and C# are indeed very similar, to the point that most organizations use devs with that background interchangeably. If that company really ruled you out because you had 7 years of C# experience, and not 7 years of Java experience, you likely dodged a bullet.

tener 6y ago
Meh, sure a C# dev can do Java and get up to speed with it pretty quickly, but certainly a proper Java dev will be more productive immediately. Knowledge of frameworks is a real skill for example.
- flukus 6y ago
  The frameworks are typically very analogous between the two as well, it takes a while to learn them but in the meantime it's googling "how to do concept x in framework y". Apart from the initial project setup you're also generally spending a lot less time dealing with the framework and instead looking at other code.
  - tener 6y ago
    Analogous != same. The differences can easily cost a large fraction of productivity for a certain period of time (a couple of months?). Would I hire a bright candidate that require retraining given absence of those that do not? Quite likely yes. Would I be pissed at false advertising? Again, yes.
CodeMage 6y ago
> If that company really ruled you out because you had 7 years of C# experience, and not 7 years of Java experience, you likely dodged a bullet. Respectfully, I disagree. Things that you should learn over 7 years of experience go far beyond learning the language itself or the fundamentals of its standard library. We're talking about two very different ecosystems.

agilob 6y ago

> Had the almost exact same experience, but with Java. I'm a C# developer and although I have some experience with Java >Sure aren't Java and C# are pretty much the same thing? Yea, hear that from the other side: I went for interview at Amazon (~2017?) for Java backend engineer. During the interview they were asking me only JavaScript questions from what looked like a standardized form to filter out phonies. I obviously failed the interview. Was told if this isn't the job I wanted I should apply for a different job and come back when I get some more experience in... Java. The recruiter had absolutely no idea that Java isn't JS and was interrupting me when I tried to explain the situation. I really should have applied for a job I wanted. One of the worst interviews I event went to. Java devs with wide recruiters network got such emails weekly, calls monthly, until TypeScript came to rescue.

LdSGSgvupDV 6y ago

Weird. The recruiter did not show you the job description? Whenever there is a job sent by recruiter, I also ask for JD and the range of annual compensation. For the JD part, it is quite often that it is just a copy-paste from some employment website.

nullserver 6y ago

This is why I don’t work with recruiters any more.