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Comment by ThereIsNoWorry | Hacker News Reader

Looking through his various articles and profiles; I don't see any relevant language from the last 10+ years (Java, Python, JavaScript). He seems to have scratched C, C++ and C#, all of which are still in use, but he didn't really get into them? His history of learning "new tech" seems extremely modest. It seems I've had significant exposure to more languages and architectures in my University program than he had in his 30 year long career. And from the year of experience I've had, I can also tell that switching between languages and APIs is easy. So, maybe age-ism is a thing, but I'd also argue a lot of age-ism can be reduced to "I never even tried keeping up and hyper-specialized myself into a dying corner even when the signs became clear I'm becoming outdated, so why doesn't anyone hire me?"

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> So, maybe age-ism is a thing, but I'd also argue a lot of age-ism can be reduced to "I never even tried keeping up and hyper-specialized myself into a dying corner even when the signs became clear I'm becoming outdated, so why doesn't anyone hire me?"

My experience has been exactly this. I've read many such complaints in the last 20 years of working, and in every single case the author has pigeonholed themselves into a long obsolete corner of the industry. There is a difference between 30 years of experience and 5 years repeated 6 times.

It is important to get onto the right team to have a long lived tech career. Your business domain should be big enough so you organically have to move with the rest of the industry. By 20+ years, you should be in a senior enough position to help lead the change.

I've never met a tech guru who was up to date and didn't retire or move on to other things on his/her own terms.

It seems I've had significant exposure to more languages and architectures in my University program than he had in his 30 year long career.

That wouldn't surprise me. Larger companies are often well advised to keep their production languages to a minimum. I mean, even Google when they first started out (straight out of grad school) wisely restricted the number of supported languages.

If you stay with the same company for a long time, I can easily imagine that you don't get a lot of exposure to new trends. I mean, C has been around for a while now and depending on the field of application can still be the go-to language.

Not to mention, C/C++/C# are not things you can just scratch at, you need to dive in and make it your home, otherwise no one will take you seriously. C/C++/C# dabblers are dime a dozen, but if you crack the top 10% suddenly you're valuable.

Python/JVM/Ruby are the opposite: It's more about a diverse skillset, because most of the time you'll have to use Java AND Python, or Python AND Ruby.

To a certain extent, I'm surprised he's having a tough time if he's a COBOL and SQL programmer. COBOL and SQL consultants bank decent money.

I suspect there is a geographic mismatch. COBOL programmers probably can't be remote-only.

Agree. Don’t just learn random tech. Learn tech that is actually needed by potential employers.

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