Slashdot Mirror
Do Old Programmers Need To Keep Leaping Through New Hoops?
Nerval's Lobster writes: In recent years, it seems as if tech has evolved into an industry that lionizes the young. Despite all the press about 21-year-old rock-star developers and 30-year-old CEOs, though, is there still a significant market for older programmers and developers, especially those with specialized knowledge? The answer is "yes," of course, and sites like Dice suggest that older tech pros should take steps such as setting up social media accounts and spending a lot of time on Github if they want to attract interest from companies and recruiters. But do they really need to go through all of that? If you have twenty, thirty, or even forty years of solid tech work under your belt, is it worth jumping through all sorts of new hoops? Or is there a better way to keep working — provided you don't already have a job, that is, or move up to management, or get out of the game entirely in order to try something startling and new.
If you have X years of programming experience, then you should be able to sell yourself based upon that.
Social media and such would be useful to programmers JUST STARTING THEIR CAREERS.
BUT! If you are an older programmer you DO need to keep expanding your knowledge. Learn newer languages / systems.
What's so hard about being active on social media and GitHub?
sites like Dice suggest....: "Do the same thing as the young folks"!!!
a. Hit up social media (really, a lot of folks mislead on social media, it's a freaking ad show, we had this discussion on trust awhile back on /.)
b. Speak up w/the megaphone on github (really, a lot of folks "reinvent the string class" on this site, it's hard to find good code except well establish projects that moved to github, it's a freaking ad show). Github is a love and hate relationship.
Dice conclusion: Sell Sell Sell. That's what the youngins' do. What they're selling is not experience, but what you want to hear, "the potential possibilities". Especially if the company (customer) is a startup, since everyone will be looking for a new job in 6-8 months anyway. Doesn't matter if you're selling fact or fiction, just close the freakin deal! That's the attitude nowadays.
There used to be something call a profession, you gained experience in it and then companies would be able to gauge it and even reach out to you via academic societies, professional registries, tech user groups or even unions. Doesn't exists anymore thanks to HR depts....
You realize that it is not write the next cool thing and move on. Change stuff because new and different is always better.
Wait till you have to support poorly written code. Or even well written code. For years and years.
I am more and more embedded tool write by what? Kids? Do they have any idea how this get used?
Yes you net beans. And what the hell is the default error setting on gcc supposed to be!!!
Avoid function with no return is an error period. A warning would be the minimum.
There has been quite a discussion (including in CIO magazine) about old programmers being exactly the right people to deal with "ancient" legacy systems. There is still a lot of systems in current use written in COBOL out there, even COBOL that predates the ANSI version. FORTRAN is still surprisingly strong in the scientific community.
The article mentions programmers continuing in niches. Me, for example. I've discovered a very nice corner where I work with RS-232 serial ports and the mistakes engineers/programmers 20-30 years my junior inflict on the community. Schools don't teach the National Semiconductor 16550 UART anymore; not to mention all the errors made trying to utilize the FIFO capabilities. (It's not engineers using the chips themselves, it's the ASIC people using the 16550 from the cell libraries!)
I'm on the wrong side of 60, yet I've not decided when I'm going to retire...if I retire. I may just decide that, as long as I can find people who need my skills, I'll keep going until they carry me out feet-first.
Um, yup, pretty much. Here's a company that's honest about it:
http://www.richtek.com/About%2...
Their replacements aren't going to train themselves.
Old programmers own the company. Or you, an old or young programmer, work for them.
To be honest, as an "old" programmer, I do not have any trouble keeping up. But I am not special -- anyone who makes the effort can keep up. I think that is the point of the Dice article cited in the post -- you can keep up and it is not that hard to do so. And you can change you job with the times. I have worked in my fundamental area of physics, then process engineering, then metrology, and now programming and communications. For the software portions of my work, since starting in 1969 I have used 8 languages, on 7 operating systems.Toss in a few variations for different frameworks. So long as I can read, I can keep up. As for the "dead at 35" meme expressed in the cited InfoWorld article (which the article author Neil McAllister promptly kicks to the curb), I just say "See here kid, I'll retire when I'm good and ready."
-- Perhaps I see less than some, but more than many.
My resume is a graveyard of obsolete tech.
Could I make a living with that tech? Probably. But not at the rate I like to live on. Old shit usually means cheap bastards. Cheap bastards usually means late to pay. Or unwilling to actually upgrade to something that is actually supported.
Hell in the current org I am in. I am fighting a battle of 'your shit is 5+ years EOL it might be time to upgrade to a newer version'. This isnt crap where they stopped making it. But stuff where they were afraid to change anything.
I've been doin' what I do for about twenty years. I've kept up on the skills in my direct field but now that I'm looking for a job again I'm seeing that companies want a laundry list of things. They want generalists and not people who have deep skill sets. So that twenty-something kid who has dabbled in what's hawt has a better chance at it than I do because I've spent my time honing my skills rather than spreading them out.
So learn new stuff? Sure! But learning it on my own doesn't give me years of experience. It gives me 'some knowledge' of whatever it is.
I'm putting the onus back on the companies to decide if they want someone who can do quite a few things OK or a few people who can do their thing really really well.
I know some older developers that have forgotten more than I've ever known and are still more knowledgeable than I am. We've also interviewed older candidates who seriously think that anything involving Struts is an acceptable answer for "how would you build a new web app if given the choice." If you're a business software developer, then you had better keep up with the trends.
"Companies say they can't find enough qualified candidates. "
Law of supply and demand affects salaries. Companies that have not learned this, can't find qualified candidates, because they're not paying enough.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
In recent months, it seems as if Nerval's Lobster has evolved into a submitter that lionizes single-source stories based on Dice advertisements. Despite all the press about Nerval's Lobster only posting Dice stories, is there still a significant market for older submitters, especially those who post actual news stories? The answer is "yes," of course, and sites like the comments section of Slashdot suggest that Nerval's Lobster should take steps such as posting something that isn't a single-source story from Dice and spending a lot of time on submitting actual quality stories if they want to not be mocked by commenters. But do they really need to go through all of that? If you have twenty, thirty, or even forty years of Dice link submissions, is it worth jumping through all sorts of new hoops? Or is there a better way to keep working — provided you don't already have a way to bypass the editorial system, that is, or move up to management, or just keep posting Dice links?
The last time I jumped through a new hoop, I broke my hip.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
The oldest developer I ever worked with was in his 80s working in a nuclear facility. He was the only one left that knew how a certain system worked. I remember him falling asleep at his desk a few times a day, as old people do, and I was told not to wake him as we would always wake up shortly. He was a good worker and part of the team.
I was born in 1973. My first machine was a TI-99 4/A with 16 K of RAM. I grew up on Commodore and Atari machines.
Every single step of the way, tech was always portrayed as a young person's game. Whiz kids abounded, and while there were older programmers, they were never well-respected (at least, not by the media and popular opinion).
This is nothing new - ageism has been a problem in computers for at *least* the past 30 years.
That's what it's about. Enjoying the learning experience keeps it flowing.
Either that or learn COBOL. That shit ain't going away any time soon and it pays well.
Task Mangler
Yes, you should stay current. That doesn't necessarily mean GitHub, but you should at least have a pretty good idea of what GitHub is, what it does and how to use it.
Here's the thing. If you want to get a programming job today, chances are you'll need to pass through some kind of "white board" programming test. That is, a 1-3 hour session where the hiring manager and team will sit you down and ask you to come up with code and architecture to solve a real world problem. That means that you'll need to be able to think on your feet. It can be a terrifying, humbling experience if you are not prepared for it or even if you are. So, the best thing you can do is be prepared.
If you're selling yourself as a Java developer, you had damned well know Java inside out. Yeah, that means crack open a recent website and read up not just on all the fundamentals you've forgotten but also read up on some of the newer stuff that Java's added in the last few years. Walk through some sample interview questions on the web.
Secondly, work on your people skills. You'll have to be able to explain yourself clearly and concisely. You can be a brilliant technical person but if you cannot be understood, you won't get the job. During the white board session, people aren't looking for perfect syntax. What they are looking for is how you approach a problem, how you break it down, and how you communicate your path through the problem. Again, this all comes down to good communication skills as much as how well you sling code.
For the record: I'm a 53 year old programmer. I just "retired" from one company and landed in another with a 20% pay raise and better opportunities to move upwards. And yeah, I did have to pass a grueling 3 hour "white board" test. It can be done.
I've been in IT over three decades. Some things I've noticed.
- Older companies like IBM may be "boring", but they are stable places to grow. I somehow doubt the programmer working on the Z-series range of mainframes are bored.
- If you are happy programming in your language(s) of choice and your employer is happy with you, you're doing something right. I resist the desires to try and be "hip/cool" by learning every variation of C or C++ that comes down the pike from youngsters who think they are smarter than the pioneers. Yes, some of them are useful in their niches, but most real work is still done in C/C++/COBOL/Fortran77/Python/Perl/Java. If you're a MS fan, you likely use their offerings. I'm a *nix man since way back and I feel grossly uncomfortable in any other environment. This does limit my employer choices, but real companies use some form of *nix for the serious stuff anyway. I would refuse on grounds of principle, to work for someone who trusts their infrastructure to Windows. I've got mainframe buddies. I'm damned jealous of their work environments. Sadly, I let the one job go that I did have that used mainframes. One day, one day...
- Over the years, my bosses who have been at least 10 years older than me have been the best bosses. Young people tend to let "power" and money go to their heads. Older people don't, at least mature people don't. Upper-level leadership already make good money.
- I hate, not dislike, working with others in the same space. I need an office with a locked door, the lights out, and the EDM streaming while I compose my ideas in vim and/or increasingly in nano.
- Managers that use buzzword terms are immediately on my shitlist: terms like "do you have the bandwidth to take on this project?"; "thought leader", "strategic", "wheelhouse", "best of breed". These mean you have an MBA or want people to think you are connected and informed. You are neither. Speak. Plain. English. Brevity and simple speech are hallmarks of people who get things done.
- Meetings should last just long enough to address goals, progress, and snags. I don't give a damn about your kids, sports, the girls you're bragging about shagging, you name it. Let's stay focused and let me get back to my office.
- What is it with men who like to start up conversations in the toilet. No. Don't do it. I'm there for a reason, and it's not to speak with you. Say "hi" in passing, and be on your merry.
- I loathe working for women. I dislike their hormonal turns and twists. I dislike the drama that accompanies most women. I dislike having to walk on eggshells around women.
- Smaller, more nimble companies, whether new or older are tougher to work for. They move quicker and more is expected of you and often faster than is comfortable.
I dislike moving so quickly that I make mistakes a rookie could avoid. Often, it takes me several days to write even 50 lines of code. I'm methodical, pedantic, and something of a bore. However, code I write works once it's cooked and put out there. I don't like perpetual firefighting. I'd rather take the "extra" time and do something well the first time rather than constantly adding "hacks". I don't do hacks. I don't add things at the 11th hour. It tends to break things. I don't look to solve problems that don't exist.
The problem is that the HR departments want X years in specific technology.
You still go through HR for jobs?
That's so darn cute!
Dice's Thibault needs clicks. That's what's hard.
That's why Dice may soon sell Slashdot, failure to monetize, and this story is an attempt to capitalize on as much market share before the sale goes through.
You have it backwards. Old programmers should make every effort to create the hoops, no matter how arcane and inefficient they may be.
Job security.
Realize that each time you change platforms, you'll forget the old one. I can scrape through now on C++ but by default I program in Java now.
What amazes me is I thought I couldn't possibly learn it because I'm older and was told a lot of shite. But when I actually plugged in an Android tablet and got going, it was insanely easy.
21-year-old rock-star developers
Burn out by 30 by the grace of corporations that bleed them dry and recreational narcotics that render them fast but futile for learning anything beyond ruby. the rockstars are great, until you put them in front of project managers, change management boards, and sysops with more than a decade of experience. At that point, its shreiking autism barfing buzzwords and pulling six figures.
30-year-old CEOs
do not a company make. a 30something CEO is about as stable as exchange on windows NT. As a corporation at best you have bragging rights to a token with an idea. At worst you have a neurotic powdekeg with no formal indoctrination in business at all. The best they can do is show up missing on a hike through the himalayas or some skydiving team building synergy pumping cockthirsty vacation in the third world. At worst, they leave your business without a continuity plan after insulting an ISIS warlord on the Syrian border when explaining their love of dubstep.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The problem isn't just that the tech industry lionizes youth, it's also that they're awfully eager to feed age and experience to the lions.
If you want a mobile client to send 180 character messages out to millions of people, hire a young programmer,
If you want your networks to support messages going out to millions of people, all the time, every time, hire an old programmer.
If you want a really cool interactive website where employees can manage the benefits and see how much is in their 401k, hire a young programmer.
If you want your payroll to run and people to be paid accurately, every time, all the time, hire an old programmer.
If you want a fancy game, hire a young programmer.
If you want a system to manage the business that sells the game, hire an old programmer.
If you want an employee that sees stuff as fun toys and re-invents the wheel at every chance, hire a young programmer.
If you want an employee who understands that this is a business and that people's livelihoods depends on it being right, all of the time, hire an old programmer.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Old programmers don't have to work. We're "consultants", sitting on the beach, collecting big fat fees for making the occasional modification to legacy code written in some obscure language. The best is, har har, when they hire us to document the code....we throw in so much bullshit into the docs that only a brother in our secret order can decode it. Do you remember Y2K? Yeah, that was us! The year 2038 problem is also going to be a big money-maker, even moreso than the pile of IPv4 space we're sitting on. Of course, it doesn't work out as well for all who enter the field. I see some old VMS programmers begging for beer money and looking for scraps of VT102's in Maynard...tough for them. Others have moved on to new careers, such as real estate agents, journalists, or porn stars, I know one feller that leveraged his way into being a big-city bus-driver, and pulls in just as much doing that as he did slinging bits at Wang, but for a lot less effort.
You absolutely need to keep your skill-set in shape; know what the market is demanding, and sharpen your tools accordingly. You don't need to be on the bleeding edge, but you do need to keep pace with the center of the curve. Doing so ensures a wider market for your skill-set.
Skills are not the biggest part of the hiring game - they're merely table stakes. What you need is access to opportunities. Github & social media can work to raise your profile, but they're not the best sources. After working in industry for longer than 10 years, your best bet is your personal track-record & network. I.e. all the folks you've worked with in the past. Got laid off, or looking for a new opportunity? Get on LinkedIn, and start working your network. Particularly colleagues who worked with you within the last 5 years, and moved on before you. Remember: referral bonuses are pretty much standard these days; your contacts want to know you're on the market so they have a chance at that bonus.
The best jobs & best teams hire preferentially hire referrals. I'm on a team that has grown from 10 to 30 in the last year; at least 40% of our new hires at the mid-senior level came from referrals. Every other hire was a massively hard slog of wading through whatever the recruiters could find. Our conclusion: if you are unemployed for more than 1 month in this market, there is a very good reason, and its not the market or the employers.
is the trash younger programmers put out and think they have created a user interface. Problem is, the younger programmers don't understand how users think and produce something the YP likes but can't be figured out by anyone else. I have to work with new software every day produced by YP's and it usually makes me want to vomit.
I work at a startup with about 10 engineers. I'm 38 and not worried at all. The folks under 30, at least at my company, have no fucking clue what they're doing. I don't know if the younger generations just suck at life or what.
s\workplace\workforce\
I'm sure you all know what I meant but some people like to complain.
For almost 14 years, there has been a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court who used to chair the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). While heading the EEOC he held up some 20,000 age-discrimination complaints until the statute of limitations for filing lawsuits expired.
Yet there are ways to hide your age until you actually sign-on as an employee. Never discuss any part of your career that ended more than 10 years ago. Touch up your gray hair; Clairol (or some other brand) is your friend. Men should touch up their mustaches and beards, too. (But DO NOT resort to comb-overs, toupees, or other ways to hide your baldness.) You can readily claim your college degrees, but do not mention when you earned them.
Another area for caution is your salary history. Avoid discussing this. Take the position that you prefer to consider total compensation, including fringe benefits. Also indicate that past compensation might have been earned for an effort different from the one you are being considered. If you need the job and are willing to work for less than you used to make, do not allow your prospective employer use your past salary to disqualify you.
Also, remember that old dogs do indeed learn new tricks. If you are experienced in three computer languages and three operating systems, the next one will be very easy to learn. In any case, the old tricks are sometimes very valuable.
See my http://www.rossde.com/unemploy.... This might be somewhat dated, but the overall content could prove useful.
I guess I'm lucky that's not a concern in my segment; embedded software. At least as far as I've experienced. Different technologies are simply tools, new or old, that are learned as needed and job finding happens just as often based on personal networks as anything, after enough years in the industry.
Good thing because most of the many excellent software engineers I've worked with does not nerd away on github after hours; they spend time with their children or spouse, go to the pub, play sports, etc. A lot of them don't care one way or another about open source either. If excited about the work we put in overtime, making hobbyist projects at home even less likely, though they do occur - of course there are exceptions to everything...
I am 67 years old, I have more than 45 years experince. My first "personal computer" was an IBM 360/20 with four keypunch machines.
I have a web site (www.andycanfield.com). This year I learned Facebook (bad user interface, dumb pictures). Two months ago I had a stroke, so I'm typing this using 'onboard', which I learned YESTERDAY.
My career path for the past 25 years was learned from the best Patpong hookers: "Find somebody who's got money, and keep him happy. The money will take care of itself."
The company is still making money running software I wrote 20 years ago, and they know it. This week they want a new feature - of course I agreed. I support their servers weekly through my home Internet connection. I live in the town where they asked me to live 20 years ago.
My wife I picked out myself.
avoid all web work. Thats where all the young guns go because its what they all think is cool, even though its actually as boring as F.
I came to software industry quite late at the age of 27. I worked for number of web development project in Java. And I was fired a month ago saying I am "not a good fit for the team".
The team in question is full of fresh grads (and I was the only non-chinese person), who are willing to work 18 hours a day, 6 days a week; tech leads and managers are around my age, and still they can't do a simple project without a major re-write 2 weeks before going live. Since I don't speak fluent Java, I was often look down for being a "non-technical" person. Still, every project I had control, I made sure work flow is optimised, everybody is in same page, requirements were correctly gathered and most important of all, managing client expectations and keep them satisfied.
For the past few weeks, I tried looking for a similar job. Most companies are unwilling to hire someone in 30s. And as someone mentioned above, most Java jobs asks deep technical questions (and trust me, you will never use those concepts in real world). And also, lot of companies do not want to pay my previous salary level even.
Then I tried Business Analyst positions, and most companies turned me down saying "you have no experience in this domain" or "you haven't done UML before" etc etc. Same goes with project management or other possible jobs in tech line.
To be honest, at this point in my 30s, I feel like I am quite redundant in software industry, and my skills are worthless. It is quite hard to change careers, as I do not have experience in other domains like finance, healthcare or education. Looks like future is doomed at this point of time. I just can't emphasize enough to anyone who is willing to land in a tech career.
Can you please stop whining about tech career discrimination? Ever considered that people might actually *not want* to work in IT?
There are less girls in tech, because girls generally find it boring. And it's their right to have that opinion. Stop trying to change the world to your miserable, limited view of how it should be.
Older programmers don't work because they cashed big when they were the rockstar programmers themselves 30 years ago and now are in early retirement. Or they no longer need to markets themselves because they are chased by headhunters anyway.
Please stop this sick communistic world view that everyone should be exactly the same, isn't diversity and freedom to develop yourself something that America was once proud of? Get off my lawn you dirty commies!!
"Spending a lot of time on Github" ... WTF is that supposed to be?
As far as I can tell, Github is way better than the classic mailinglist, because it has a web-ui you can use everywhere and the code is right next to the discussion you're having. If anything, I spend less time on github than on mailinglists. I can post a bug in an instant, if I run into one and it get's resolved faster than ever because Github is a godsend of a ubiquitous FOSS pipeline.
If you think Github is a "new hoop" you have a problem. Github is a breeze of fresh air for the FOSS and dev community and all it does is put your coding skills under public scrutiny and two clicks away from review with no need for anybody to install any dev-software what-so-ever.
If you're such a seasoned pro, that shouldn't bother you at all.
Everything else is free IDEs, awesome new PLs, great FOSS software that reduce the gruntwork of back in the days to tweaking a few things here and there, advanced supercomputers that cost half a months wage and sit on your desk, slowly ditching pixel-based screenresolution. The team around me is a bunch of younger people that wet their pants if they see or have to look at a CLI and come running for my help. ... And tell emphasise all around that I'm indispesable.
Really no problem here for seasoned devs, AFAICT.
As for ageism - quit whining and grow up. ... Here's a comment on that issue from me from about a year ago (modded +5), if you need a hint or two on how to do that.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Leaping through new hoops? No. Looping through new heaps, on the other hand...
Experienced programmers often do not spend a lot of time on Github, because they have job where they spend a lot of time coding. So they might sell themselves on the "puts a lot into the job instead of into random Github repos". My point here is that you can not have it both ways: both being seen as super committed and crunching 80 hours a week and simultaneously as someone who spends a lot on Github. They are mutually exclusive.
I'm gonna boil that lobster, I tell you...
https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=dinner&type=Repositories&ref=searchresults
I go through recruiters. With X years of programming experience, they come to me. But HR are the ones who gave them the job requirements, usually.
I've been around long enough, though, that I can interpret what HR says into what's actually needed. 5 years of jQuery experience? How about 15 years of object-oriented javascript programming, that oughta be good. I can familiarize myself with a specific library as needed.
Reading through the job requirements from a recruiter is like being at the end of a game of telephone - you have to guess what the actual intent is, see if it's a job you really want, and if it's something you think you're qualified for.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
This is tough, but you need to hear it... It's not the industry. It's you.
You didn't lose an IT career, because you never had one. By your own description, you don't have control over the technologies that you've tried to use. I also notice that you didn't mention any business domain knowledge.
I could sugar-coat this and tell you that it isn't fair, but this really how economies have always worked. If you want a job, you have to bring something of value to the relationship. It is not up to potential employers to train you so that you can take their money. Face the fact that with less than 3 years of experience, no evident business focus, and weak technical skills, you rate as entry level at best.
Figure out what you want to do, learn how to do it, and find opportunities to use your actual skills. You may need to make tradeoffs and compromises along the way, so think about your choices carefully.Getting started is tough--I've done it more than once--but putting it off just makes it harder.
Last, if I was interviewing you, and you blamed your lack of success on the ethnicity of your co-workers, I would end the interview and not call you back.
I know it is hard to hear criticism, but I hope it helps. All the best in your search.
Oh this is about social media. I thought they meant hoops like wading through a bunch of ObjC and Java bullshit in order to have your main() entry point and go into a loop that runs your program.
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
It's often more about who you know, and who you are known to.
But that is only if THEY KNOW YOU ARE GOOD to start with.
I've had lots of people I knew from working with them, ask me for references or if there were openings where I was. Some of them simply were not good programmers so I just ignored the request or politely declined...
It's not like just knowing someone is enough, in the programming world people remember who was good to work with, and that is the reason why going through people you know can work - precisely because the tech world is the ultimate meritocracy, and few people want to spend time learning if someone new is worthwhile if they do not have to.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I hear all the cool young programmers are hanging out on 4chan!
It's not who you know that will necessarily get you a new job.
It's both plus having the ability to communicate in a reasonable manner.
When you are "experienced" and have quite a few years of development behind you, a decent developer will have built up a list of friends from previous or current jobs. Hopefully, these friends respect your ability to develop. When it comes time to obtain a new job, hitting up those friends is an invaluable resource. I have hired several colleagues from previous encounters in this manner. I have even hired the same guy twice. Each time I moved jobs, I pulled him in behind me. I have also been hired twice thru personal references myself.
Just think about it. Do you think an interview is much more than a crapshoot? You are trying to judge the suitability of a candidate based upon a few hours of interaction. Wouldn't you rather judge someone based upon their past performance of which you (or a friend you trust) are familiar, having previously worked with them?
I'm not saying that an old dog shouldn't learn new tricks. Far from it. It's every developer's responsibility to maintain their skill set. I am extolling the virtues of building a network of past/current colleagues who might be of help to you in the future, just as you might be of help to them.
After so many years of experience you'd think older programmers would know that you learn and adapt or you stagnate and fail. That goes for anyone in the IT field at any age or experience level. If social media and public code repositories are the new way to prove programming acumen then its time to get over it and dig in.
That's motherfucking right. Don't listen to shit like "you must know all the new languages". Really ? What the fuck does any language have that C++ does not. I know Assembler, C, C++ and perl. I dare someone here to tell me that I need a new language. I double dare you! When I go to some interview I make them cry like babies. I was there when there was no Solaris, just SunOS. I started with Solaris 2.3. I wrote my own device drives for Linux Kernel 0.9xxx. Who the fuck will try and make me feel bad about how old I am. I forgotten more than most people know.
Be confident in your knowledge. Do not go the interview feeling sorry for yourself. You have experience, knowledge people skills. Be proud. Never show fear.
Walk in there and whip out your dick. On your dick you have a tattoo of all the Linux kernel versions.
Who gives a flying fuck about Python and PHP and Ruby and Java shit. You know C and C++. Fuck everybody else.
Thank you for listening
Come the revolution you'll be scurrying back. Like that prick McAfee.
Only the incompetent blame their tools.
Take it from a 50YO programmer, you have to keep learning, or else you end up out on the street looking for jobs. Joke? Even if you do, you are competeing against 20 YOs who have the same amount of experience as you do in the "New" stuff, and companies don't want old folks
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Truly... you cannot learn computing in four years, hence we are all full of bugs and gliteches everywhere. Use C++, anything else is like decoration or scripting.
As an older but experienced developer I see it all the time.
An example is National Instruments. I have experience they should be able to use but after months of trying I gave up.
Later I encounter a guy at a meetup that works for them and ask him about it.
He replied that National has a youth culture image and they like to brag the median age of their staff is 30.
Sheesh.