They may have been working, however there's zero guarantee that they have been learning anything new or even spending hands-on time doing engineering work (as o

They may have been working, however there's zero guarantee that they have been learning anything new or even spending hands-on time doing engineering work (as opposed to shuttling between meetings). I interview 2-3 candidates a week, including many people almost twice my age. While these older engineers have impressive-sounding resumes (IBM, Sun/Oracle) most struggle to code anything more complex than fizzubzz. In my case I make it as easy as possible for the candidates by allowing them to use any IDE they can install on my Macbook and encouraging them to search Google/StackOverflow if they get stuck because I want them to be comfortable and actually complete the task. Majority still end up with trouble implementing a simple JUnit/Selenium automation test for a login page.