Headhunter: So how many years of experience do you have with X?

Me: Why does it matter? I have been a software engineer for a decade, I can pick up anything in a matter of weeks.

Headhunter: *writes in his notepad: 0 experience with X"*

*writes in his notepad*.

Lol can't get any real than this.

A bad headhunter is a red flag in my opinion. Why a company that cares about quality would use a generic headhunter to appraise the candidates?

In fairness, depending on X and your experience, it sometimes matters. If it's someone who's been doing JavaScript all their lives and is going for a senior OCaml role where they're expected to jump right in, that could well be an issue.

If it's experience in the latest fad JS framework... yeah, not so much.

Why are we all like this? Why can't we just grant them the simple satisfaction they ask for? Here they are, begging us to lie about it, and we cold-heatedly refuse, because it's technically incorrect... Just say you have 2-3 years of experience with X and make their day! I mean, who can prove you wrong? Will they even try?

@lambda123 WTF, you work at my company! lol

@lambda123 I worked with a similar software product and it still scares me today. No doc, no compiler/transpiler/interpreter error and warnings, just good old pain.