Ask HN: What do future employers look down upon?

[frfl]

My original question was going to be:

> Is taking a PHP (laraval, php7) job going to be looked down upon by future employers? Suppose you have side-project work in other, trendy languages/frameworks too. The PHP job is NOT Wordpress related. (Seems like PHP, perhaps deservedly so due to x, y, z..., has a bad reputation)

But I suppose it would make sense to ask a more general question.

> In general, what do future employers look down upon when hiring someone? What are some red flags* that would stand out?

A few I can think of (which may or may not be red flags depending on who you ask, highly subjective): - No knowledge of TechX and TrendyTechY - Short stints at many jobs (less than a year each)

*: For simplicity and reducing the scope, let's ignore obvious red flags like: no VCS knowledge, limited coding, limited developer tool knowledge, no-or-limited teamwork experience, other things to indicate incompetent software development skills

[djaouen]

Job hopping. Gaps in resume. I know this from experience. :-(

[kyriakos]

If you have good non wordpress php experience and an eu work permit you fall in the group of developers we hire so no that won't be looked down at least with the companies I work with.

What we generally don't like in resumes is candidates who switch jobs every few months, have learned no new tech in the past 2 years and/or never had a side project.

[satirka]

In my experience and opinion I think no employer will ever look down upon a particular technology that you know.

What they might look down upon instead are some characteristic traits that they might find in you. For example: passive, not enthusiastic, no ambition etc.

If you show enthusiasm and passion for what you do, the employer won't hesitate to hire you because everything is learn-able if you have the will.