[mak4athp]

I personally agree with you, I just find that you/we are in the minority as hiring managers.

When you hire a PHP person to join your Ruby team, you're making a bet that they're able to ramp up on the new environment as readily as you and I might. I've seen great engineers fail to make leaps exactly like that one. The weirdest things can hang some up, and it can take quite a while to recognize and address the issue. It can cost quite a lot more than holding out for the right candidate. Sensibly or not, that's a risk that a lot of employers aren't willing to accept (or maybe aren't able to).

What mitigates the risk for these employers is if the candidate has other ready skills or has a track record of picking up plethora of skills like "C, Ruby, Java, C# and others" as you describe. I tried to express that in my original comment, but maybe didn't do so as clearly as I'd hoped.