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Comment by fecak | Hacker News Reader

I've seen quite a bit of 'discrimination' against enterprise devs by startups over the past ten years as a recruiter (and JUG president for 15 years), and the data in this piece regarding Java/C# devs failing more interviews than counterparts is at least a little surprising.

I generally attributed the discrimination to be more about dev culture than tech skills, whereas the enterprise dev maybe with a few years at a bank/insurance/pharma company might be too set in the traditionally slow pace in regulated industries or bureaucracies to adapt to the stereotype of a fast-paced startup. I never felt that startup leaders might actually think of them as lesser-skilled, and it wasn't discussed - the feedback on enterprise candidates would often be simply 'not a good fit' before an interview would even occur. I was always a bit uncomfortable with that reaction, as clearly there are many good enterprise devs of high quality regardless of what tools they use.

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I'm afraid I'm getting stereotyped as an enterprise dev against my will. I've been on interviews where that was certainly the vibe I got. No matter how much I stress that I'm interviewing while I have a job for the purpose of getting away from that culture, I can't shake that opinion it seems. Trust me I would gladly program in anything other than corporate Java if given a chance.

I think I've got the worst of both worlds too, because before this I was in academia, where I was also bored with the slow pace of things.

Your best bet is a side project. Do something fun in a language you enjoy, and talk about that in the interview instead of the work you do. Make it big enough that it warrants an entry on your resume. Or contribute to a well known open source project.

This is really good advice, and something I've advised to countless devs over the years. You can overcome some of that stigma by doing a side project in another language or even something outside the realm (like an IoT thing). Many Java devs will go with Scala, but I'd even try to go deeper and perhaps do a couple side projects and shift to something like Python or a Lisp (which often gets 'cred' points from startups).

> Trust me I would gladly program in anything other than corporate Java if given a chance.

You need a side gig or to get involved with an open-source project. Get exposure outside of work then get yourself a more exciting job.

I wonder how much of it is won't work extremely long hours for low pay.

they said enterprise devs are failing more interviews because of cultural filtering by the hiring company, not that they are failing the technical assessments more than other devs.

The piece also says "Programmers who used Java or C# (when interviewing with us) go on to pass interviews with companies at half the rate of programmers who use Ruby or JavaScript."

I might be reading that wrong, but I took that as "Java/C# devs failed company interviews 2x Ruby/JS devs".

No?

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