Is it Possible to Age Yourself Out of a Job? 225
An anonymous reader asks: "I'm a programmer with more than twelve years of experience. In all that time, I've never been a 'senior' developer. I'm competent and I work hard, but I don't think I am quite a senior developer in terms of technical or people skills. More and more I feel that I'm aging myself out a job. By this time, employers expect someone with my experience to have advanced some, and they may not be willing to even talk to me now, thinking that my pay requirements have grown while I have not. Even if I did get hired someplace new, my peers would likely be much younger than me. What do you do when you have an applicant like that? Are my fears legitimate?"
Re:You're probably fine (Score:3, Informative)
Either a) you're wrong about advancing (perhaps you're underestimating yourself), b) you've advanced some (experience and maturity at least), but not enough to justify your current salary, or c) you're appropriately paid for what you do but you've shown yourself not to be interested in advancing and learning, and so may fall out of sync with current practices (in which case, crack the books and start learning!)
New languages every year isn't important in the way it once was; language innovation seems to have slowed compared to say the 1980's. Substitute new design patterns, application frameworks, libraries, etc instead.