Potential vs. fixed mindset

Today I had an interview for a job. These days I'm not really job hunting; I have enough freelance work, though it'd be nice to get more hours. A recruiter reached out through LinkedIn and I was interested enough to follow up.

The interview was short, and I have been through enough of them in my working life to know by the way they wrapped it up that they wouldn't be going further. Unlike most companies, I was very pleased to get quick feedback on their reasons why. I appreciated this very much, as you almost never get this even if you ask for it, and they offered it spontaneously.

However, the reasons were a little unfortunate, to my mind. Basically, they boiled down to me not having experience in some of the exact things the client is looking for. At least one of these was a misunderstanding, but no matter. One of them was that I've never used the exact pattern library technology the client uses.

The more I thought about that, the more wrongheaded that type of thinking appears to me. I've been working with websites for almost 25 years now. My entire working life has involved not knowing things, and having to learn them for my job. I am where I am today, doing what I'm doing because of a few key people along the way who hired me despite not having the necessary experience for the job.

Those people believed in who I am. They believed I had the innate abilities and intelligence to learn what I needed to do. And I did.

The entirety of web development involves constantly learning new technologies, and constantly developing your knowledge of old technologies as they evolve. It's a key skill. If you can't do that, you won't last.

If I wasn't the kind of person who could quickly pick up and adapt to new technologies, or new methods of working, I wouldn't have lasted two and a half decades in web development.

No, I've never used that exact pattern library. It would literally take me probably less than half a day to pick it up. And then I'd be off doing the job.

I wonder how this company thinks people learn? Most people pick up new skills at work because their job requires it. If companies don't hire someone because they don't have the exact experience they're looking for, how is that person supposed to get it?

There are probably people out there who play around with things like pattern libraries just for fun during their time off. I'm not one of them. Quite frankly, I don't invest time in things I'm not paid for, or need for my personal projects. I do take the time for continuing education on key web technologies like accessibility, CSS, and JavaScript—the essentials. Pattern libraries, or similar technologies, are not essentials. They are specific to the client, and I pick them up on an as-needs basis. They don't have a long learning curve, and once you've done a few similar things you need very little time to get going with new ones.

I think employers either have a potential (growth) or fixed mindset. Employers with a potential mindset hire employees for who they are—their smarts, creative thinking, technical mindset, and learning abilities. They look at someone like me and realize there's a reason I'm still around doing what I'm doing after so many years.

Employers with a fixed mindset think they need someone who checks all the boxes and already has the exact experience they're looking for. That's not that easy to find. Even if they do, should they change their tech stack, is that person capable of learning new technologies on an as-needs basis?

This experience made me reflect on, and feel deep gratitude for, my past and current employers with a growth mindset. They're the people who have allowed me to become who I am and do what I do. I don't think I'd flourish working for an employer with a fixed mindset.