> So the pattern I'm seeing here is that hiring managers don't give a shit about your experience as long as the buzzwords match. We knew this already, but I was expecting a thoughtful essay, not a reiteration of this disguised as a proper argument.

Having waded through stacks of breathless resumes exactly like they're talking about, I have to agree with the article on this.

A decent developer should be able to get by with whatever environment we put them in front of. Even if it's just notepad and an old version of Perl. Those kinds of very specific details can come out in the interview.

What often happens with non-US persons is that they start to list every conceivable technology that consumed electrons in their office environment hoping one of them is interesting enough to get them a job. It doesn't, it usually gets their resume tossed because it looks like an identical list of enterprise software stacks from the last 300 resumes my recruiter gave me.

> base64 decoded version of this tex

Actually that's rather clever. Make them do some kind of basic, but hackerish task to submit. That way you filter for people with at least basic technical computer skills so you don't waste time considering them.