It’s an unfortunate example of the strange priorities that seem to plague our industry. I’ve also been doing this development thing for a while now, and at thi

It’s an unfortunate example of the strange priorities that seem to plague our industry. I’ve also been doing this development thing for a while now, and at this point I’m fairly sure the actual order of what matters looks something like this (most important first): 1. Solid fundamentals in development and/or infrastructure as appropriate 2. Soft skills, particularly different styles of communication and organisation 3. Domain knowledge relevant to the role/product 4. Knowledge of any specific language, tool, process or technique We could debate the order of the top two. Domain knowledge is new to almost everyone when they first start a new role, unless they happen to have worked for someone else in the same field before. The specific technologies are rarely going to be an exact match, but that doesn’t matter as long as someone has good general knowledge and the motivation to quickly learn new tech when they need to. I can’t help feeling that a lot of problems in a lot of development groups would vanish if hiring was based on looking for good fundamentals and a professional approach rather than strict buzzword compliance, and if the day-to-day working environment then supported good people doing deep work. It’s not really surprising that some people think every new technology will take weeks to learn and capable full-stack developers are mythical creatures when you look at the environments and hiring processes they are stuck with, but it doesn’t have to be that way and of course the better developers are drawn to the places that aren’t, which continues the cycle.