Probably because I'm competent and there is more to adding value than memorizing specific tech. I can't speak to your experience, but as far as mine goes I've never had a problem landing a job.

I'm zero worried about it as it's never been an issue.

So how fast do you think you could get up to speed enough to lead a project creating an Android app if you have no experience in the stack?

If you’re being hired to lead developers and projects, don’t you think you need to know the technology you’re leading?

To be fair I have no idea about the full stack life. I, however, am also not convinced they add "immediate" value. Once you're beyond mid-level being a so-called generalist is not as useful. Most of my work at high senior, and now staff level requires actual deep knowledge of the preferred stack. I have yet to meet a reformed full stack developer in our ranks and there are tons we hire, and even more that come through the door.

I don’t touch the front end development. But I am very much a “generalist”.

- back end development in a few popular languages

- about an average “data architect” for lack of a better word. I’ve led implementations on every type of database imaginable including ETL type jobs and online systems.

- “DevOps” (at least if you give me an AWS account) including setting up networking infrastructure, logging, monitoring, CI/CD, etc.

I’ve led plenty of pre-sales meetings, writing SOWs, pretty PowerPoint slides and architecture diagrams etc.

The “generalist” is very useful when you need someone to lead projects and to understand how everything fits together. I’ve had to wear all of the above hats at startups. Now I wear those same hats at a cloud provider I’m sure you have heard of. I specifically targeted my current position because I wanted to be a generalist.

I’m no special snowflake. Many of my coworkers who came up the ranks in startups and have similar experience can do the same.

perhaps because it was discerned that he is the better programmer in general.

Because I also have prior experience in those and other languages.

I have “prior experience” in any many languages. But I know the ecosystem has changed to the point where someone who has recent experience would be more valuable. That would be like me (hypothetically) saying I had prior experience in JavaScript from a decade ago and I can write JQuery with the best of them.

An organization that prefers ecosystem knowledge to deep knowledge and ecosystem familiarity hints at poor planning and needing someone to "hit the ground running" to fix their mistakes.

I'd pass on such a position.

Also you talk about only having experience in a less popular language as a death sentence.

I've been only writing Haskell professionally for a decade, but I get endless amounts of interview invites for prior experience.

Out of curiosity I went through some of the better invitations interview process and had no issue getting offers either.

If anything mentioning my professional Haskell experience gets me an offer faster no matter the positions requirements.

If a company is looking for senior developers who are to serve as team leads and lead initiatives, why would they hire someone without previous experience in the technology? I’m sure you could eventually get up to speed. But the reason I haven’t had to do a coding interview in well over a decade of working at companies from your standard Corp dev jobs, to companies where they wanted a “tiger team” to lead green field initiatives, to a startup where the then new CTO was looking for someone to lead “cloud native projects” to my current job in the cloud consulting department at BigTech is because I knew the ecosystem well.

When I spoke to CxOs and directors, they wanted someone with a proven track record that could solve their problems. When I was being hired as a dev lead to lead junior C# developers he inherited, what would he look like hiring someone who knew Haskell?

How was i suppose to go from an empty git repo to a fully fleshed out MVP or later from an empty AWS account to infrastructure, CI/CD, to a fully fledged out MVP if I didn’t have prior experience?

If someone is looking to create a new iOS app. Who should they hire? Someone with iOS experience or someone with Erlang experience?