The hiring processes I personally experienced and have some meaning to me at the same time, all favor these traits in general: 1. Enthusiastic problem-solving a

The hiring processes I personally experienced and have some meaning to me at the same time, all favor these traits in general: 1. Enthusiastic problem-solving attitude usually in a specific platform or set of languages / tools 2. Willingness to learn new things and to discover the unknown that a candidate proactively executes by reading or trying new things 3. Ability to adapt technology-wise and ability to collaborate with different kind of people, not necessarily just "the geeks" 4. Willingness and ability to pass or share knowledge in any area Myself, I experienced it is harder for me to keep pace mainly with point 2. and 3. because I already have learned a lot (full cup so to say) and having less spare-time dedicated for such things (as I dedicate almost all my spare time to family more than before). There are also aspects directly favoring different candidates (not necessarily correlating only with age) I would like to emphasise, which unfortunately are consciously or unconsciously considered: 5. More skilled and experienced people tend to ask for more money 6. More experienced people tend to have more hard-to-change habits which may be incompatible or hard to include into the company culture / workflows / whatever else 7. Cultural differences between generations of people tend to create tensions What I recommend to you is to embrace the above points (definitely not a full list) and try to emphasise your best traits or think about how to sell them in the context of the hiring process and at the same time try to mitigate the problematic points. In general, you have a big advantage you probably do not see now - life experience and also tech experience. Younger candidates simply cannot compete with your age. I think you need to find a way how to wire your hard-obtained experience as "your output" that definitely has a value for any company. Embrace those facts and build your self-confidence on them. It may be the case that the job you apply for will be little different from what you experienced up to now - more mentoring, more leading, more advisory work, more inter-department communication (from/to tech language of the geeks) and so on. And I sincerely wish you luck.