CSCareerQuestions

I hire developers with mismatched experience all the time - with a couple of guiding principles:

• I strongly prefer candidates who have experience in at least two languages. If they've learned two, I can pay them learn the one I need.
• As you mentioned, total years of experience counts more than most other factors. I can't hire a junior who knows 4 languages when the role I need as an experienced lead.
• But I'll take a risk on a promising junior when I need a senior (guess how many senior devs are actively looking for work on an average day... I'm not a choosy beggar.)
• For senior and above, I'm looking for evidence of experience with the underlying principles for the roles I need filled (back-end, front-end, security, identity, DevOps, test frameworks, etc.)

Oh and, please do apply. If you make a good impression and aren't the team member I need next, I might know someone who does. You want to always be networking.

And any manager who makes you feel bad for applying for a mismatched job is an asshole and trust me, that person's peers (like me) are aware of it and it is limiting their career progress. I just don't like them enough to even tell them so.

Edit: Answering a question below, my team is fully remote, though we have do have limitations around country citizenship for certain roles.

It depends entirely on the team and their comfort level with it. I've been very successful at landing a job in a new tech stack by first doing a few side projects in it. I've changed tech stacks three times.

However, since most developers very rarely change tech stacks, some will be deeply suspicious and want ample confirmation that you are planning to stick with it. They can be extremely uncomfortable when an applicant knows more languages than them. You also cannot say anything bad about their language or they will immediately disqualify you. You basically need to prove to them that you have seen the light of how great the new stack is and how you can't wait to work in it. They will feel like you are praising them and take it as flattery. If you say anything bad about the new stack, they will take it as an insult and get angry.

Silly I know, but it is what it is.

So even if just for a weekend, I'd learn as much about node.js as possible. Maybe make an express server with some endpoints that connect to a database like sqlite or something.