Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study

Any coding you've done more than five years ago isn't relevant anymore. I can't remember what I did five years ago. It is probably outdated, replaced or not in use any more. Looking back at my projects from five years ago, I would probably not agree with most of the code, as I've learned a lot of new things. I do care about your projects. This is the most important part for me. What projects have you done, what was your role, what did you do, what did you use, what was the result, and what are your proud of. Also, I hope you varied your work a bit, because when I read you worked 10 years on the same system, it tells me you didn't think enough out of the box and I'd worry about your skills outside of that system. Also, surely you did smaller projects in those 10 years than just saying you 'maintainted and implemented new features for system X'.

I don't care about your Delphi, BASIC, COBOL or Java 1.2 skills (looking at your CORBA). I do care about your Java 8, mobile, and recent webtechnology skills. You don't know what the technology behind a website is? Then it's a minus, as you've missed out on ten years of technological advancements in your field. I'm not saying you should be expert in web technologies or frameworks, but at least have a basic understanding about HTML5, CSS and Javascript, what they do and what they are used for. Like, the basics.

I care little about your soft skill trainings, they might have some value. I don't care about your framework trainings, I'd rather see you use them in your work experience. I do care about your Java (Programmer 2) certification, because you are working in a Java shop and as somebody who has done the certification I know the value of preparing for the certification, and I know you are dedicated for this.

I care about what libraries/frameworks you would use, and will ask about the reason for using one over the other. This gives me an idea that you can look outside of your comfort zone, be able to accept other ideas, know how to analyze functionalities of a framework, and know that you should understand a library's internals before using it because of the hype.

I care about your theoretical/general skills: Do you know how to structure your program, do you know about SOLID principles, do you know design patterns, etc. These give me an idea if you can write larger programs, that can be maintained.

I care about how you answer my questions, how you respond to be challenged on a point, how you will defend a point, how you will convince me to use a new library that I don't know about (which I actually do) and sell me it's good points. This is because I want to see you speak the same language of the team, and can communicate your opinion in a professional manner. Get irritated or super-defensive, you probably aren't a good fit for the team, as you'll have colleagues that challenge you as well, and you will just be irritated all day long.

All these give me an idea on how passionate you are about developing software. Not passionate as in 'go spend 70hrs a week here', but passionate as in seeing software development as your craft, your reputation, your skill.

In the end I care about three things: Can your do the work in a professional way (hard-skills), will you be able to work well with your colleagues (soft-skills), and will you be happy to work here (retention).

Seems to me that an experienced perl programmer would compare well to someone with some academic experience and light project work. I honestly don't understand why the perl programmers aren't offered at least entry level wages with opportunities for advancement and raises if things go well. Instead, I typically see them passed over and lots of focus on recruiting university students away from other employers.

Over 40 here. The most difficult part is human interaction. Youngsters are obviously well behind their own hype and have their right to try. Mature folks like me take things with a grain of salt and acknowledge hard work is only a part of the picture, often not the most important. From a technical point of view, the headless chickens thing is also common but, again, youngsters have their right to believe they are Einstein, Feynman or Jobs.

How is this not age discrimination? Or do people make the case that age discrimination makes business sense?