But isn't OmniCorp married to their devs too? Those devs probably took a while to get up to speed on the proprietary stack, and outside devs would have a ramp up time. Not to mention outside devs would be hesitant to take the job seeing as they'd get stuck learning proprietary technology making them less mobile.

There's actually a practical case study in this. Epic Systems, which uses MUMPS, is reasonably well known for hiring naive college grads, teaching them MUMPS, and then exploiting the crap out of them.

Also while doing it in Madison, Wisconsin (not too many other large employers for programmers), and with a 1 year non-compete on Epic software.

So if they leave the company, they probably have to leave town and learn something totally new.

(All those, and more, are the reasons I decided not to go to an on-site interview with them after invited.)

Tech is a vast field. We are having trouble finding a Django developer where we are. Project managers decision to hire based on this, my opinion is we should look for a good all rounder, as Django knowledge only makes up around 25% of the knowledge that is needed. Someone that knows HTML, some JavaScript, any other framework, how to set up remote servers and use a database effectively. If your only skill is Omnicore, your suggestion makes sense, but there are so many different things to learn, that having a wide knowledge base makes sense.

I agree with all of that. It's a complex issue. And it's compounded by the general "we have no idea how to hire developers" that is found throughout the industry.

Yep, and having that wide exposure to industry-wide technologies is a big factor in programmers being so marketable to other companies, I'm sure.

True, but you can't re-negotiate your salary once you're in the job. So OmniCorp has all the leverage there.

Do they? If you're the one developer in the world keeping their tech going, and the nearest next developer is 6 months of ramp up time away (plus the time for the hiring process), you'd have some leverage.

In this hypothetical scenario, the developer has no leverage to renegotiate, because they have no job options outside of OmniCorp, hence, no BATNA (best alternative to negotiated agreement). If the developer was homeless or independently wealthy, and not in need of a job, they might have the ability to terminate the agreement without reaching a new one. Then the company would truly have something to lose.

But OmniCorp knows that the developer has to pay rent, and no other company is going to offer them anything but an entry level job, because the only experience they have is OmniCorp this, OmniCorp that.

It may seem far-fetched, but believe me, this discussion is hitting close to home for me. My team is currently moving to a highly customized tech stack that is open-source, but has zero or near-zero adoption outside of the company. It's scary; I've been in software for eight years and I feel like I'm fresh out of college. If you're in software I hope it never happens to you.

It happened to me. I got out of it by studying open source tech stacks and building side projects until I could get a job away from the proprietary stuff. It wasn't ideal, but I managed to pull it off.

I'm mostly playing devil's advocate with my replies. It's generally better to stick with mainstream -- and ideally open source -- tech. But I don't entirely agree that proprietary tech is only beneficial to the company in these scenarios. They are taking risks that the employee can take advantage of. Heck, for me, that proprietary company still contacts me on occasion to see if I'll come back.

Aha! Well done - I hope you are getting some high in the sky hourly rates now for your highly specific skills.

dont forget, when you can easily apply for 1000s of other jobs, they can also easily find 1000s of ppl out there to replace you. and as far as OmniCorp goes, you know how much IBM is paying now for one of their mainframe programmer? those guys... you lose one, you wont get another.