Professionalism both in terms of appearance and interaction are definitely helpful. And despite my ripping on SV stereotypes in other posts I actually adore IT

Professionalism both in terms of appearance and interaction are definitely helpful. And despite my ripping on SV stereotypes in other posts I actually adore IT. I'm delighted to come to the office every day because it's an opportunity to apply something I know, solve a problem or learn something new. I recently changed roles after going back to my UNIX SA roots and working for the last few years in a front-line customer-facing support group; what people would call the ops side of devops. My boss was gutted to lose me as their last line of defense before escalating to Red Hat but what he and his boss miss the most (so they say) is my ability to remain cool under pressure and solve technical issues while managing bridges with MDs and EDs on the line. Partially it was organizational authority (oh, they escalated to that guy) but it was also technical authority (oh, they escalated to the guy who solved the last major problem we had, and put in a SIP to make it never happen again) and partially it was managing the message and keeping it appropriate to the audience. I realize this is an absurdly self-aggrandizing post but it's an honest assessment of beyond strictly technical ability how some people add value and my way of agreeing with the post above mine that interpersonal skills are paramount. And to echo what others have said - keeping current is IMHO the key to keeping employable. I ran down the Red Hat Certified Architect track because my employer paid for it and it was a way to get my guys motivated to get it done too to better their skills. We have several more RHCAs as a result. But I also spent the last year building k8s clusters and figuring out how to integrate kubernetes into my employer's systems and now I'm off extending terraform providers in go to the same end. It's fun as hell to think every day I shave off getting systems to my peers sooner is one more day they're productive that much faster. At the scale we work that's a huge lever. How can anyone not be excited about that regardless of age?