[gervu]

> ML has advanced so much in those 5 years that all my prior experience is totally irrelevant to them

Most people involved in hiring are either not involved with the work being hired for, and thus have no idea about that side of things. Or else they're total amateurs at hiring itself who have, by virtue of having some measure of authority over it, deluded themselves into thinking they are awesome at it.

Arrogance and bias will lose you an awful lot of qualified applicants.

It's not even that hard to work around that problem, if you're willing to shut up and listen. You can easily factor an objection as a concern instead of shutting them down entirely, which lets the applicant either show you that it isn't a major problem after all, or respond in a way that confirms that maybe it is.

[Aperocky]

I can understand if he's a PhD level scientist recruit. That it takes a while to digest all the newest methodologies if he hasn't been following.

A data engineer should have no such problem. Anecdotally, when I was recruited to Amazon, all of the people who made the shots are either SDE or SDM. It could also be a way of telling you that "This role has already filled", as it is likely with all of the people lining up for data/machine learning roles.