I was a contractor for years with IBM, Ford, Silicon Graphics. On most of the projects they gave me, I had little or no experience with the technology I had to

I was a contractor for years with IBM, Ford, Silicon Graphics. On most of the projects they gave me, I had little or no experience with the technology I had to use to complete the project. For an AIX project on PS/2, they sent me a double stack of AIX manuals. It was an X Windows project so I bought all the O'Reilly X books and read the main two. The next project was an RS/6000 project. Same code base (Ford's in-house car design program) but now targeted for PHIGS. I had never even heard of PHIGS. Ford already had the code written, but the trickier things like surface shading were not completely standardized, so every vendor had a slightly different way of setting up the data structures. IBM's Graphigs had to be used. Next project was the same Ford code, but now on Silicon Graphics with a PHIGS library licensed from a French company. A friend recommended me once for a project where PCs were connected to an IBM mainframe using 3270 emulation software. The company (Brown-Forman) wanted to automate some aspects of their terminal sessions. I used Turbo Pascal to communicate with the PC emulation software. I'd never used a mainframe, mainframe terminal, 3270 emulation software, or Turbo Pascal, though I did know Pascal. I would have never been hired for any of these projects if I had to know them inside out to pass an interview before even starting. No wonder there is a shortage of tech talent. Tech companies today expect you to know everything they might want you to work on when you walk in the door. Ever heard of learning?