[brianwawok]

> As the GP said, any CTO or dev lead worth their salt would hire a dev with good fundamentals in the 'wrong' language over one with poor fundamentals in the right one.

For sure. You can learn a new language in a few months, but not how to think like a programmer.

However, there could be an argument to be made for holding out for someone who is a good programmer AND knows the right language. Especially if it was a future leadership position. In the busy world of a startup, I may not have 3 months for you to learn Ruby / whatever language of the day.

[logan5]

I've been to a few interviews with startups. Some of them didn't care about not having their language on the résumé while some of them did. The impression I got is, you can just tell which one of them are looking for a code monkey and which ones want you to take a bigger role of contributing as a software engineer.

[brianwawok]

Maybe. But it is a legit chance someone wants a software engineer but doesn't want to teach an entire stack to someome.

If you coded in C for your business and two identicAL in every way people applied.. one only knew ruby and one only knew C.. which do you hire?

[mseebach]

If you ended up in that situation, obviously pick the candidate more familiar with your stack, but that's a hypothetical, hiring in this business is not generally characterised by a glut of qualified candidates.