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Comment by metaloha | Hacker News Reader

It's worse when the requirements are impossible. I was told recently that one reason I wasn't shortlisted was because I didn't have 10+ years of experience with Angular 12+.

For those who don't realize, Angular 12 was released in mid-2021, less than three years ago. Even if the company meant Angular2+, that was still only released in 2016, less than eight years ago. I asked if they meant AngularJS (originally from 2010), but no, their requirement was 10 years with "new" Angular. I informed them they would be looking for at least two more years, but good luck anyways :)

I've seen the same type of request for React as well, with one company somewhat ridiculously asking for 15+ years of React experience (it's less than eleven years old).

I think the quality of technical recruiters has taken a hit in the last half-decade or so.

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That is so common.

Windows 14? iOS 18.0 ?

Great warning sign that the HR department do not talk to engineering.

Or that HR is an AI script.

Or that they're posting a "fake job" (often advertised to meet legal requirements) and the position is already filled internally.

In all cases you do not want to apply.

> I was told recently that one reason I wasn't shortlisted was because I didn't have 10+ years of experience with Angular 12+. For those who don't realize, Angular 12 was released in mid-2021, less than three years ago.

In my experience those are not the kind of requirements I deal with. I have to deal with:

- Senior software engineer position requiring: knowledge of X programming language + Y framework + sql + git + linux + DDD + TDD + BDD + OS + networking... until here everything OK. But on top of that companies also ask: monitoring and observability (because of the stupid "you build it you run it"), docker, k8s, kafka/sqs/sns/rabbitmq, microservices, aws/gcp/azure, event sourcing/event driven archs, and a long etc.

I mean, what the actual fuck.

It's either a job ad because they legally need to advertise it before getting a visa for a specific person they're already talking to, or a silly job ad where they don't get realise they can't pay for someone who actually matches those requirements.

Either way, you may as well just apply. In the first case you won't get an interview, in the second things may get more normal once you talk to the tech people.

Or they’re looking for someone with a few of the listed skills.

I’d be totally on board with job ads saying “the team’s tech stack includes A-Z. No one is expected to be an expert in all of these but if you have experience with some of them or equivalent tech, we could be a good fit for each other.

Depending on circumstances, the ad could go on to say stuff like “we’d love to boost our capabilities in these particular skills” to call out anything that’s an area they want to focus on improving with the new hire, if there is one.

Hahaha that's so fucking relatable. I saw an ad that was hiring for company X and would prefer candidates that actually been previously working at company X.

> you build it you run it

Huge fan of this model. And fwiw, aside from not being strong with aws but still familiar, I tick all the qualifications you listed and I would expect most of that list to be valid for someone to claim to be a senior. That person should have some experience in nearly all of that. Specific frameworks should allow for more wiggle room if you are familiar with the given language.

The bigger problem is "senior" developers with 4 years experience who don't know half of that and are mostly familiar with crud apps.

A real senior has 20 years and stays away from buzzword tech. I have nothing against tdd but its a techique that is not that popular. Why would everyone have experience rabbitmq. Some might know aws or azure or google cloud or vercel or oracle cloud or 50 other vendor solutions. Why need to know them all or any? These things can be learned and past learnings transferred.

That's not "stupid requirements" the just the scope for backend engineer job nowadays.

Also, you might get the job if you don't match the requirements 100%. There are so many permutations of backend technologies nowadays that pretty much no one has familiarity with exactly the one they're looking for, so they have to compromise.

> I think the quality of technical recruiters has taken a hit in the last half-decade or so.

Recruiters without domain knowledge about the area they are hiring for is very common. I'd say it's like that for 95% of all recruiters I've worked with in the last two decades.

There are those who specialize in some niche area and when you find them, it's awesome. But most are just hiring for any position that appears in the org chart or is requested by clients. Add to that being overloaded and the screening becomes really shallow (this, ATS systems and whatnot).

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