No, not at all, just that interviewers are totally uninterested in anything older than about that date. I've been in the industry for 16 years, the last 9 on my own as a consultant and have been kicking the tires on some full-time jobs in the last couple of months and it's definitely eye-opening: they really only want to talk about what I've just worked on and trying to use examples from anywhere else in those 16 years is met with suspicion. Some of the hardest problems I solved were when I was limited to ASP and Access. The fact I didn't build the thing in Mongo and Clojure doesn't mean I can't use those technologies. Some of it is the impedance between "technical" recruiters who are really just looking for you to say certain keywords and some of it is the age gap between older devs and the developers who are typically interviewing them.
I have a resume that's good enough to get me in the door at a few places you've heard of this time around but it was also turned down flat without more than a recruiter call at other places where my current experience exactly matched the tech they were asking for. I can't help wondering if they saw "16 years of experience" and either thought "too old" or "too expensive". I have considered doing a little A/B testing on that.
I have a resume that's good enough to get me in the door at a few places you've heard of this time around but it was also turned down flat without more than a recruiter call at other places where my current experience exactly matched the tech they were asking for. I can't help wondering if they saw "16 years of experience" and either thought "too old" or "too expensive". I have considered doing a little A/B testing on that.