[vesterr]

"I'd imagine that if DHH really, truly wanted to work on the Linux kernel, he'd have no trouble getting hired to do so."

That's pretty silly. Just because someone is famous for a Ruby project doesn't mean they'd know they first thing about low-level kernel code.

"it's pretty obvious they wouldn't want to work on that"

I'm not talking about working on something they DON'T want to work on. Obviously! I'm talking about working on something that is outside what they are known for, but which is an interest of theirs (hypothetical in this case).

[nostrademons]

People (usually) don't hire based on specific skillsets. They hire for talent and passion, and figure that if someone really wants to be working on that problem, they'll find a way to teach themselves what the need to know.

My last job had two main projects - a Netbeans plugin and a JSF webapp. I had no JSF and no Netbeans experience, though I'd done Java Swing development before and written several PHP or Perl webapps. My coworker on the JSF project was a former COM and .NET developer who didn't know Java.

[vesterr]

"They hire for talent and passion"

Microsoft used to say something very much like that.

But at the top of the application: "State your skillset".

...You use PHP, Perl, and Java? Not by choice, right?