It would be great if this attitude were more prevalent, though I see some comments taking it to a bit of an absurd extreme—"you would't hire a React developer a

It would be great if this attitude were more prevalent, though I see some comments taking it to a bit of an absurd extreme—"you would't hire a React developer as a GPU programmer!!"—and this is both valid, and somewhat missing the point. I don't think the argument is that we should pay no absolutely attention to domain expertise for software engineers. Skill in a particular domain of software development (or business) is valuable; an experienced front-end web developer is going to have a large library of knowledge that is just not accessible to someone coming from e.g. an embedded background. If we need a senior front-end engineer, I'm unlikely to be hiring people who have no experience with that area of development. But I have seen some frankly silly objections to candidates in the past. If we're primarily using React and I've got a great candidate with 10 years of Angular experience, I'm not going to reject them outright. I am way more interested if you demonstrate a clear understanding of the problem domain generally, if you are able to talk about your work and the challenges in it, and are able to communicate effectively about your own skill and experience. My experience suggests that if you can do the above, you're not going to struggle to start writing e.g. Ruby as a developer with a Python background. Or even worse is the inclusion of specific technology – people including things like "Redis" as a requirement in a job posting is baffling. Related: from a personal perspective, learning new languages and frameworks is by far the single most powerful tool I have ever encountered for increasing my own technical skill. Seriously, it's an absolutely insane effectiveness multiplier to be able to bring together knowledge and standard idioms from different systems and development paradigms.