[humanrebar]

For good companies, laundry lists of skills are more like wish lists than requirements, especially with niche technologies. Use the job description to figure out what general kind of developer they're looking for (low level? database? UI? enterprise? team lead?) and apply if you're interested.

Regarding the idea in your edit, huge companies like Facebook and Google do have coding puzzles and competitions. People who excel in those surely gain confidence to apply to all sorts of job openings.

[vonmoltke]

> For good companies, laundry lists of skills are more like wish lists than requirements, especially with niche technologies.

No, for good companies requirements will be actual requirements and as such be fairly short, the rest if the list appearing as "bonus", "preferred", or other flexible adjective.

I'm a former systems engineer who used to do requirements analysis, so I am a little sensitive to misuse of the word "requirement". Job postings like you describe drive me up the wall.

[humanrebar]

I can relate to that. But I'm willing to give companies a pass on a crappy job posting if the position itself is interesting.

[redblacktree]

Especially since it was very likely written, or at least mangled, by HR staff.