Our company hires people who are simply interesting, intelligent, and willing to learn.
We seriously consider non-coders for positions that will be primarily coding if they have a strong background in some interesting field (like statistics).
Not all companies are just vomiting lists of reqs into the void while sitting on their hands for the perfect candidate to roll in.
I've always been under the impression that those "50 years of Java + .Net + COBOL" adverts are purposely made unattainable because they already have someone lined up for the job, but they need to 'advertise' the job for legal reasons.
We seriously consider non-coders for positions that will be primarily coding if they have a strong background in some interesting field (like statistics).
Not all companies are just vomiting lists of reqs into the void while sitting on their hands for the perfect candidate to roll in.