This part reminds of some of the job interviews I've gone to, as a software developer:
"Detail-oriented: New researchers are often immersed in the minutiae of research, such as building software, collecting data, and running experiments. This means that they tend to focus on details (which may or may not be significant) rather than the bigger picture."
I am in my 40s, yet when I go to a job interview I am often interviewed by people in their 20s. I have 20 years experience with dozens of technologies. And yet, just recently, I found myself facing a long list of questions about the details of specific technologies, for instance, NodeJS. While I may not know the details about NodeJS, I had no trouble learning Struts and then Spring and then Ruby On Rails. Is there any reason to think I can't pick up the details of NodeJS? I have done one major project with Node, is it really crucial that I know all the latest packages before I get a job at your company?
In these interviews I am often surprised by the focus on very specific aspects of particular technologies. Who really cares? We all need to learn some new technologies for any job, even if it is just the specifics of the software that the company has built.
I am often surprised at the extent to which my 20 years of experience is discounted. However, I run into this less often when I am interviewed by someone who is in their 30s or 40s or 50s -- they seem more willing to recognize that I've had a long career and I've learned a lot of tech.
I think this is small sample size. I spend a lot of my time as an engineering leader teaching people how to interview for engineers. A lot of them are young but intrinsically recognize that trivia questions aren't important. Because I read about things like behavioral interviewing now instead of the release notes of the new webpack I get to make an impact in my org, but lots of smart companies do the same.
I can provide some insight into this, as someone in their 30s, I fully understand and appreciate your point, but I nevertheless ask specific questions about technologies we use.
The reason that specific questions are asked, in my interview context anyway, is to ensure there is ideological alignment and acceptance of the technology. Whilst an experienced developer should be able to understand a programming language/framework, being willing to work with its idioms or recommended best practices can be difficult for some.
As an extreme example, if someone is well versed in procedural programming, and we work in an OO heavy environment, then my concern is about whether the candidate can understand the reasoning for our abstractions and contribute to our OO modelling conversations. The same could be said of an experienced OO practitioner being asked to code in a functional manner.
I think a good rebuttal, although I haven't had candidates do this nor I have tried this in interviews myself, is to to be well read about what a technological detail is about then draw parallels to what you do know in detail and explain how you are able to work with the technology the interviewer is talking about due to the similarities with your experience.
For example, working in a PHP shop, if I asked someone about Doctrine ORM and they responded that they have worked with Hibernate in Java and that allowed me to go into a line of questioning that discussed modelling and leads away from the specifics of Doctrine, I would be perfectly happy with such a response. On the other hand, if they outright dismiss it and say that they prefer to always right queries directly, I may need to question context and decide whether they are so inflexible about it that it would cause them issues when working with our codebase.
"Detail-oriented: New researchers are often immersed in the minutiae of research, such as building software, collecting data, and running experiments. This means that they tend to focus on details (which may or may not be significant) rather than the bigger picture."
I am in my 40s, yet when I go to a job interview I am often interviewed by people in their 20s. I have 20 years experience with dozens of technologies. And yet, just recently, I found myself facing a long list of questions about the details of specific technologies, for instance, NodeJS. While I may not know the details about NodeJS, I had no trouble learning Struts and then Spring and then Ruby On Rails. Is there any reason to think I can't pick up the details of NodeJS? I have done one major project with Node, is it really crucial that I know all the latest packages before I get a job at your company?
In these interviews I am often surprised by the focus on very specific aspects of particular technologies. Who really cares? We all need to learn some new technologies for any job, even if it is just the specifics of the software that the company has built.
I am often surprised at the extent to which my 20 years of experience is discounted. However, I run into this less often when I am interviewed by someone who is in their 30s or 40s or 50s -- they seem more willing to recognize that I've had a long career and I've learned a lot of tech.