> There's a lot of anger in this thread at companies for making obvious choices.

Elsecomment and on Reddit, you'll see the attitude that their years of experience should be sufficient assurance for their prospective employer that they can pick up whatever other technologies are out there.

This is often coupled with the "you shouldn't need to learn new things outside of your 9-5."

Here, you are presenting a situation where a company would rather promote from within (counter job hopping culture) and would penalize someone who is not learning about new things that their current employer isn't using in the hiring process.

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And you've mentioned it elsecomment too - it's about the risk. A company hiring an individual who isn't familiar with the technology and has not shown the ability to learn new material is more risky a hire than one who is either familiar with it professionally or has demonstrated the ability to learn new technologies.

That runs counter to the idea of the "best" candidate being the one who is most skilled but rather the "best" candidate being the one that is the least risky of a hire.