[dragonwriter]

> I hear far more complaints about how difficult it is to find good people from companies hiring for mainstream languages than from those using more niche stuff

I would assume that:

(1) Those using niche stuff are less likely to be hiring under the impression that the main measure of skill is years of experience with a language, and

(2) those using niche stuff are, on average, doing more interesting work that attracts more intellectually curious candidates.

As a result, the mainstream firms get worse candidates, and try to compensate by asking for even more years of experience, and asking for years of experience not just with language but specific libraries and other tools, hoping that will get them more skilled candidates, at least for their specific toolchains. But doubling down on that just gets them candidates that are less capable (because even to the extent years of experience are useful, there are diminishing returns, and people who have spent a huge amount of time with the same stack also are likely to be in the “1 year of experience, repeated N times” category, rather than N years of learning and compounding knowledge. (Also, because at a certain point you start making impossible demands, increasing the degree to which the hiring process filters for dishonesty.)

[tome]

I believe it's another example of Paul Graham's Python Paradox, just repeated more than 15 years later

http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html