That makes a lot of sense then, and I'll bet the software industry has changed more since 1999 than I could know. I worked in the DC area from 2006 until last year, and running into another programmer under 30 on the job during that time was the exception rather than the rule. Almost all of the programmers I worked with were 35+ at a bunch of different jobs, ones where I was hired to use "new" technologies like Ruby, Python and PHP. The largest shop I worked at, most of the developers were at least 50!