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Comment by pcsanwald | Hacker News Reader

As someone who does a lot of hiring for a startup, I will say I'm agnostic with regards to languages and frameworks. We've hired folks with all sorts of disparate backgrounds including embedded C (we mostly use Java and JavaScript).

I think you should sell yourself as an experienced technologist who's looking to learn. You should also demonstrate a willingness and ability to learn new things; maybe by making something and putting it up on github.

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I'm so glad to see this. Especially when the point of a given stack is supposed to be that it makes life easier for developers, I think it's weird that there's so much emphasis on knowledge specific to given stacks, to the point where it may be this is a tacit admission that our stacks are their own problems requiring attention we could be giving to our problem domain.

"... I will say I'm agnostic with regards to languages and frameworks."

You get an up vote for that.

I just thought I'd echo this. Many people who are general technologists can hit the ground running, or be up to speed in a given language/framework in a matter of a couple weeks (or less).

I like to talk to people with a variety of skillsets and interests in their background and try to figure out how to leverage those towards the work we do.

Bonus: having a huge diversity of skills is kind of like having a deep bench to work with

I wish more were as progressive as you, with different languages the syntax changes bit the patterns and computer science is exactly the same. A good programmer can adapt very quickly as even within a language ylthey have to adapt all the tome to new libraries and new problems.

This is an excellent point. We hired an engineer at the startup I work at who had a lot of Java experience but very little Ruby experience—our stack's primary language.

He was a fast learner and had no issues getting up to speed in a reasonable amount of time.

that's been my experience, too; both for myself personally, as well as people I've hired.

Agree! I got hired at my current job with embedded c and hobbyist PHP background. First day on the job the boss said "You know PHP and C right? Start learning Ruby." I worked hard but it went well.

How did the embedded c person make the transition?

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