It was rather entertaining to read this article on in ExpensifyBlog
CEO Friday: Why we don’t hire .NET programmers « Expensify Blog.
As many mentioned, there are obvious mistakes and misinterpretations in this article, which is covered by later "updates" that I found at the bottom. My personal opinion is that CEO even with perfect technical background should touch this subject with extreme care or not touch this at all since the line where it comes from objective to subjective, from experience to judgement, from expert valuation to show incompetence is very thin. .NET is one of the most dynamic development platforms now days targeting all aspects of technical solutions for every kind of business. Mentioning the fact that most of startups don't use it cannot be an argument. The explanation of this sis very obvious at least for me - most startups are not started by extremely experienced tech-savvys and most of them just can do PHP because it delivers results fast and learning curve for it is very comfortable. If you know nothing about Web programming, you can get good results in PHP within couple of weeks. With .NET you just can't do it, at least if you want to apply the technology in a right way. I could perfectly imagine some startup started by couple of smart guys having a brilliant idea but they are not programmers. So they get a PHP book or just read a manual because everybody says it's easy. They start doing it and it delivers - that what is most important in this kind of situation. And when you have 75% of your project done in PHP you go beta or show it to an investor, which gives you the money and you can hire someone to help you - even there would you switch the platform? In 99% the answer is no. It's just not efficient and at this stage the owner anyway still participate in the development. This is pretty normal. But this doesn't make PHP the best platform and doesn't make PHP developers any better than .NET or any other developers. There are thousands of extremely complicated, sophisticated platforms for banks, trading, investments, healthcare, even television over Internet, all created on .NET. You can't even see it most of the time because for example MVC-based solutions don't open their .NET background on the first look and this is exactly where the eye of beholder is after.
So my humble conclusion for that article is that, unfortunately, judgmental and subjective opinions of higher management is unfortunately still prevailing in this reality even when it has no real ground except rumors and own limited experience.
Monday edit: Skip my post and read this one instead. It says the same thing, but less offensively. (Or, rather, more offensively to Facebook and Google employees, less offensive to .NET developers, though the underlying message is the same.)
And this "update" is also cheating. The article by Matt Swanson mentioned there is much more constructive. It is not about the technology or anything like that. It is between the ever lasting question some people ask themselves at certain period of their lives - can I do something on my own or I just go on payroll and spend my whole life working for a company? Most of the people do it since it is very common and natural. Other people start doing something in between - project based work for many clients, freelancing and contracting. And the smallest number of people who feel enterpreneurship spirit in them start their own ventures. But bloody hell, there's not a word about what programming language they use!!!
