I'm a .NET fanboy, but the likelihood of me ever working for a .NET shop is next to nil. The work is just not interesting. Sure, if I just wanted to collect a (almost decent) paycheck, I'd do it, but given that there are a dozen other niches I can work in, I'll pick any of them over the .NET world. The only way I'd be converted is a massive paycheck and at least some interesting problems, but neither of those seem to exist in the .NET world, by and large.
I'm on the other side of the fence: At my last place we actually had some moderately interesting problems to solve, but had a hard time hiring because the vast majority of the applicant pool couldn't do anything that they couldn't look up on Google or StackOverflow.
Even with a moderately easy tech-screening process we could only realistically do second interviews with around 1.5% of the applicants we got. For as good as .net is, I think it's doomed to be relegated to accounting apps for the foreseeable future.
Amen. I got lucky- I'm a .NET developer now working for a small startup in NYC, but spent a long time in .NET shop hell.
That said, we're starting to look for another developer, and it's a nightmare. So many resumes of people that (without wanting to sound rude) belong in a .NET shop- I interviewed one guy that didn't even know SQL, because all he'd ever done was use prebuild factory methods for database access. He had a Masters.
untog, if you see this, could you drop me a line? Email should be in profile. I'm a .NET developer in NYC and may be looking to make a move. And I know SQL :)
