Not toil and sweat but as a fresh graduate do you really have enough experience to make decision about culture? And that too based only on a couple of interviewers?
Not working on windows because you don't agree with its design philosophies is ridiculous. It's not that you are working on building windows. It's just a platform. You select the tool that works best to get the job done. Not because you agree with the tools philosophy.
If I got such a letter I'd actually retract offer to this candidate. Flexibility and eagerness to take on challenges and learn goes a long way in your initial days as a developer. Lacking these qualities is a big no-go for me at least.
I've been working in this industry for a while, and I've never regretted my decision to pretty much be a Linux-only guy. You can't do everything, and I like working with tools that are pleasing to me. I felt that way when I started working and I feel that way now.
Sure, I probably lose out on some jobs because I'm not a Windows guy, but I'm also not an Oracle guy or a SAP guy or a Cobol guy or a Fortran guy either. It's a big field, and there's lots of room. As of late, I've found that even here in Italy there are plenty of Rails jobs, so, despite knowing it, I've also made a decision to not be a "PHP guy" either.
So I don't think that sort of choice is merely lack of experience.
I think the only reason for worry is if someone decides they're an XYZ guy, and that's all they do. I've used many languages professionally, and find learning new ones fun. I have more time for that if I spend less screwing around with things I don't like.
Absolutely. When I interviewed for my current job one of the interviewers walked in, looked at my resume and said "Wow a resume with no Windows on it. Nice."
Not that I'm bashing the Microsoft stack mind you, it just doesn't interest me. I'd do it to pay the bills if I had to but there's enough depth in the industry that, as you say, I'm not terribly worried by not knowing everything.
> I think the only reason for worry is if someone decides they're an XYZ guy, and that's all they do.
That's exactly I will retract offer to this guy if I ever got such a letter. I don't really object his position to not program on a specific platform. It's themindset.
Flexibility and eagerness to take on challenges and learn goes a long way in your initial days as a developer.
But don't forget the maxim that you are what you repeatedly do (and other people will give you more of the work you have demonstrated enthusiasm and ability with). If you accept to be flexible and take on challenges means you take on the Perl/CGI company website with the flat-file back-end feeding the 3rd party ActiveX display, you will become skilled at dealing with Perl/CGI, fakeabases and ActiveX.
What you do shapes your future, and it's quite reasonable to say "I choose not to head towards that kind of life, because I dislike X philosophy" - you may be misinformed about X, but it's not a "ridiculous" position to take unless you are struggling for money or alternative options.
as a fresh graduate do you really have enough experience to make decision about culture?
That's not really a valid question - you can't fault inexperienced people for making decisions without experience, that's circular.
If you are asked to do perl, fakebases nad activeX in your early days and enjoy it. That's fine. If you don't like it you can always reject the next assignemtn .But you have rejected after knowing that you did it and you didn't like it.
That lad, has probably not even worked on say Windows. Its premature to reject that platform based only on "design principles" it follows
>>as a fresh graduate do you really have enough experience to make decision about culture?
>That's not really a valid question - you can't fault inexperienced people for making decisions without experience, that's circular.
You are generalizing my statement. I am specifically referring to judging culture. You can't even figure out let alone make judgements based on that if you are fresh out of college because you have barely seen any corporate culture by that time.
>Flexibility and eagerness to take on challenges and learn
You are right in principle, but to you these things mean "compromising on what I want to do to please the corp", Eagerness means "I don't care whether I do something that I want, I will be happy to do whether they will let me", learning means "Accepting the decree I am given as the right thing".
All of these are horrible, grotesque deformations which caries just enough of the original truth to work as sound-bites but will wreak the life of those who labor under them.
I'm late to this discussion but I'm a bit appalled that no one has cited pg's Great Hacker's essay, which makes nearly the same point on platforms (it's a little stronger in that it was talking about delivery platforms as well): http://paulgraham.com/gh.html
Windows with an X server to the machine I'm actually doing the work on is just fine (there are still some important things that run best on Windows), but any company that otherwise chooses Windows as a software development platform is saying a whole lot about themselves and pretty much nothing good.
Not working on windows because you don't agree with its design philosophies is ridiculous. It's not that you are working on building windows. It's just a platform. You select the tool that works best to get the job done. Not because you agree with the tools philosophy.
If I got such a letter I'd actually retract offer to this candidate. Flexibility and eagerness to take on challenges and learn goes a long way in your initial days as a developer. Lacking these qualities is a big no-go for me at least.