[ncmncm]

There are lots of people curious about coding Rust in production, and most of them consider themselves competent to write it. But that is not what you look for when hiring. Or, it shouldn't be.

[stevepeg]

I would say that curiosity about languages in general is one item that you should look for in candidates. Not the only one of course but curious people do tend to learn and adapt well.

For an analogy, I wouldn't hire a pilot that isn't interested in other planes than what's on their license. What if I want to operate some new models?

Unless I'm looking for someone for a truly specialised role, I would avoid people that stick to only one thing for their entire careers.

[ncmncm]

Curiosity is a quality, but not a qualification.

For hiring, what you should look for, first and foremost, is competence. Curiosity is not a substitute.

[nicoburns]

Curiosity is a decent indicator one of the many types of competence that you ought to be assessing: the ability to learn new skills and deal with problems that are outside of their current skill set. Which for most software jobs is rather key skill.

[nicoburns]

As long as either:

- they’re senior level in another language and have at least one non-trivia project in Rust (need not be professional)

- Applying for a junior position and thus will have access to mentorship

I don’t see what the problem is. Rust isn’t Haskell: while there’s a few new things, most imperative programming experience will translate.