Answered elsewhere: If we're investing in someone's training we'll promote someone from within who is already familiar with the product and then backfill their simpler work.
There's a lot of anger in this thread at companies for making obvious choices.
If the perfect applicant happens to be looking for a job and it can save us the time and churn of switching someone internally, then yes: I would prefer to hire that person.
> The whole hiring angle you describe seems silly in terms of process and expectations
I think the silly part of this thread is all of comments from people who think they know better how to operate a company they know nothing about the people who were in it.
From 2022 this all changed as markets became more FCF sensitive, ZIRP went away, and AI started automating a lot of the dev practice. I know a sadly high amount of people (though in my circles not too many) who built up lifestyles predicated on high software salaries and a static set of requirements. A lot of these folks are angry and scared and desperately trying to navigate this changing world.
That puts them in a precarious place since the organization that downsizes would be looking at them first ... and that they haven't been able to attain any mastery of the newer technologies that are coming into play in the system.
For many of them, they're finding themselves leaning on AI to make up for the lack of learning new things (and without learning those new things). They're also realizing that any candidate who is more skilled than they are would be a stronger candidate (and that their job is increasingly becoming entering prompts into an LLM that is easily replaced).
Why they got to that spot and stopped? That's an open question. Some might have gotten comfortable at that spot. Others forcefully reject the idea that continuous learning outside of the 9-5 is needed (spend 40 hours a year learning a new technology). Others may lack the problem solving capabilities to go beyond that spot. I know I've seen all three of those. There are probably other reasons too.
Elsecomment and on Reddit, you'll see the attitude that their years of experience should be sufficient assurance for their prospective employer that they can pick up whatever other technologies are out there.
This is often coupled with the "you shouldn't need to learn new things outside of your 9-5."
Here, you are presenting a situation where a company would rather promote from within (counter job hopping culture) and would penalize someone who is not learning about new things that their current employer isn't using in the hiring process.
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And you've mentioned it elsecomment too - it's about the risk. A company hiring an individual who isn't familiar with the technology and has not shown the ability to learn new material is more risky a hire than one who is either familiar with it professionally or has demonstrated the ability to learn new technologies.
That runs counter to the idea of the "best" candidate being the one who is most skilled but rather the "best" candidate being the one that is the least risky of a hire.
I screen hundreds of resumes a week when hiring. I know this very well.
Hiring the wrong person can easily be a net negative to the team. Hiring too fast and desperately hiring anyone who applies is doubly bad because it occupies limited headcount and prevents you from hiring the right person when they become available.
Building teams is a long game.
So if you don't have a job opening posted on the day they're sending out applications, you may miss your shot to hire them.
I think we could all be a little more mindful of that in hiring. That waiting for perfection is itself a fallacy for all these reasons and plenty more.
“We’re making do, but we’re kind of figuring out X as we go. That’s working for now, but the problems keep getting knottier as we grow and change—it works, but it’s expensive in terms of avoidable mistakes.
Nothing’s on fire, but if we ever got the chance, we’d value authentic expertise in this niche. But if it’s just ‘I could probably figure that out,’ we’ve already got plenty of that internally.”
Where a good hire ends up helping those internal people as they develop experience and expertise, and one that’s not right is worse than none at all.