> what they are actually asking is, "Do people want to hire a 50 year old programmer?" Is that really true? When I was a hiring manager, we went out of our way

> what they are actually asking is, "Do people want to hire a 50 year old programmer?" Is that really true? When I was a hiring manager, we went out of our way to try and attract and hire very senior, experienced people, especially those who had managed to avoid the lure of management and just played a CTO/chief architect role. (managers were actively rewarded for making such hires and penalized if those hires swiftly left, for good or bad attrition reasons) I personally hired several, and also had a few who worked for me, some of whom were > 30 years older than I at the time. It was a truly wonderful experience, as people of that age who haven't checked out bring something great to the team, both in terms of productivity and in mentoring for the young folks.