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.

Comments

Stupid question.

[khasim]

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.