The paragraph that hooked me has not been addressed in other comments. That is:
Most programmers I know seem to respond to job searches
by learning new programming languages. The logic there is
pretty weak. "I can't get a job with a language I know, so
why don't I see instead if I can get a job with a language
I don't know." Learning new languages is a good thing, but
there's a time and a place for everything. It's never a
matter of your skills being stale; there are still COBOL
jobs out there. If you're good at programming, and you
can't get a job, the skill to improve is not your
programming skill but your job-getting skill. If you've got
a task that requires two skills, and you have one of those
skills down solid, but you suck at the other skill, the
thing to do is not spend even more time perfecting the
skill you already have down solid.
As someone looking into programming jobs after a long period of not doing too much programming, I'm interested in what people think about this sentiment.
That paragraph kind of struck me too. I know I have thought that I need to learn new programming languages in order to get a job. Its hard not to think that when the majority of programming jobs have very very specific requirements on languages and technologies that you MUST KNOW in order to apply, despite the reality of the skills of the person hired.
