Recently, a potential employer wrote me a helpful note that my web qualifications were much less than that of his other applicants. Maybe that is so. I don't know. It is difficult for me to demonstrate my proficiency with the web, because so much of what I have done has been a hobby rather than work-related.
Browsing his company's web site for less than ten minutes, I detected three glaring grammatical errors and a design atrocity that his geeks overlooked. Maybe I am an old fogy who doesn't know anything, but it seems to me that an advertising company that displays such mistakes on its web site cannot be destined for good things. If he had at least been willing to interview me over the phone, I might have shared my observations with him. Since our communication has ceased, I find satisfaction in imagining the reactions of his customers. Perhaps an elder geek is not completely worthless, after all.
I am proficient with HTML and CSS and have no reservation stating so on my resume. I don't see what is so special about web development applications or languages. I cut my teeth on Assembler, and I don't see how any of the modern languages could possibly get any more difficult than that.
If I was capable of understanding and coding in the context of a language
^sjdg923^&$6232)j^&-kw$as1!
then why would
<HTML>stump me?
The answer appears to be that managers don't want to gamble on an unknown quantity and are afraid of fossilized old brains that quit learning new things*. They prefer applicants with a proven track record in a given technology that can hit the ground running, even if they have to pay twice the salary that I would expect in order to spend a bit of time getting up to speed. I understand the rationale for closing the door to people like myself well enough. But I'll keep knocking.
* - Has my brain fossilized? Well, I don't think so.
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