[hmschreck]

We had a developer interview here who was an Elixir zealot - and I use that word entirely purposefully. He was very adamant that we needed to rewrite our entire platform in Elixir because it was obviously better.

We ended up not hiring; he refused to touch certain technologies that make up a core part of our stack (Node being the biggest issue), and he was honestly something of a massive tool -- on our take-home thing (takes most developers maybe a few hours) he limited himself to one hour, didn't get it done, wasn't even solving the right problem, and, when he sent in his solution... "It's ok, I know you won't get it, but that's OK."

[fnordsensei]

Being selective about the language you work with is entirely valid. But why would you go to an interview where they're not looking for your language and try to convince them otherwise? It seems futile.

[tsmarsh]

I had a weird experience where I was offered an interview at a company I respected, but who used ruby a lot. I explained that to everyone in the chain that I'd want to try and work to change that, and eventually got rejected because I didn't like ruby.

It was a weird experience. But I got a nice lunch out of it. I'm still not sure what they got out of it.

[mirceal]

a zealot is a zealot is a zealot. you don't get much info from the strong preferences of a zealot. you just quickly learn that you need to avoid them. refusing to touch the tech stack of the person that pays your bills if flat out stupid. if you don't touch it why am I hiring you? depending on how much experience this person had this behavior may be correctable if he/she is lucky enough to find a more senior developer that can show them how their [stupid] choices impact the project and how they can eliminate whole classes of problems by choosing the right tool.

[EpicEng]

Run, run far away... (I realize you did, but man...)