IBM job ad calls for 12 years’ experience with Kubernetes – which is six years old

Other job ads make similar mistakes, and candidates do worse

IBM's Global Technology Services has posted a job ad calling for candidates with a “minimum 12+ years’ experience in Kubernetes administration and management”.

Which is a little odd because the first GitHub commit for the project was made on June 7, 2014. And the feature freeze for version 1.0 was announced on May 22, 2015.

Sharp-minded Reg readers will have recognised that – absent time travel – it is therefore not possible for anyone to have 12 years’ experience with Kubernetes.

The job ad, live since the end of June, is sadly silent on just how IBM expects candidates will have found the time to accumulate a dozen years’ experience in a six-year-old project.

At least Big Blue is not alone in making such a silly mistake: developer Sebastián Ramírez, who created FastAPI and Typer, recently shared a similar experience on Twitter...

I saw a job post the other day. 👔

It required 4+ years of experience in FastAPI. 🤦

I couldn't apply as I only have 1.5+ years of experience since I created that thing. 😅

Maybe it's time to re-evaluate that "years of experience = skill level". ♻

— Sebastián Ramírez (@tiangolo) July 11, 2020

Ramírez’s post sparked a lively conversation about similarly bonkers job ads, and unfortunately dopey candidates for tech jobs.

We interviewed a 28yo designer in 2012 who told us he had 17 years experience designing websites. I said, “Tim Berners-Lee doesn’t have 17 years experience designing websites.”

“Who’s Tim Berners-Lee?” he asked.

So yeah. 🤣

— lynn boyden (she/her) (@lrb23) July 11, 2020

If you’ve ever spotted a daft job ad, or been asked something especially silly in an interview, feel free to write to me and maybe we’ll get some more laughs from this situation. ®