While I don't advocate for mass applying, I have always believed that most top candidates for a position will only hit approximately 5/8 desired experience/skil

While I don't advocate for mass applying, I have always believed that most top candidates for a position will only hit approximately 5/8 desired experience/skills points. As Carmack says in the thread, the labor force simply has a perpetually non-optimal distribution of skills. After seeing it from the hiring side for the past 7 years, I can also say that there's usually a few extra unlisted criteria that would more than substitute for the skills you don't match on. The content of job listings is largely true to the desires of the hiring manager but also incorporates some organizational inertia. It takes a while to get new technologies incorporated into the practices of recruiting offices. Many managers are usually informally hiring for skills that have not yet achieved enough of a foothold to be a screening criteria.