[JeremyMorgan]

I'm not the author, just the submitter. But he pretty much nailed the situation in Portland right now. If you're a .Net developer and you're any good there is tons of work, for great pay. But there is a huge OSS startup scene running parallel in this city that probably better represents where the future of the industry will go eventually. If you bet all your chips on the .Net horse you may not like it later down the road.

[selimthegrim]

What's their criterion? I have two years of experience and I can't even get people to return my emails...

[deciplex]

I'm not going to work for any place that hires software developers based on which language they are most familiar with at this moment. As though a competent developer can't pick up a new language in a few weeks.

[StefanWallin]

Well it isn't just the language that would be of interest, it's the APIs and the existing libraries that are domainspecific that takes time learning. I find it very reasonable for recruiters to look for people knowledgeable in the programming language(s) that their clients utilize in their production since those developers will most often be quicker in their job.

[deciplex]

All else being equal, sure.

[JeremyMorgan]

Sure, you can pick up C# in a few weeks, but there's no way to become a competent .Net developer in 3 weeks. It's not that it's difficult to learn, but there is so much to learn. In 3 weeks you may be able to drag and drop and autogenerate enough stuff but serious development would take much longer for someone with no experience.

The same could be said about Ruby, Python, Node, etc.