at least in the case of MS technologies, the developers were exposed to the most of the components (or their previous incarnations) of the platform well before official .NET packaging. I'm still wondering what good candidates were placed into one position i came across in 2005 that had 10-12 years of J2EE experience requirement. Somehow i was scared to apply to such a place - as i only worked with Java since 97 and with J2EE since 99 :)
