[susan_hall]

I have faced something similar. Though I have 14 years experience with technologies that are suppose to be in demand (Ruby On Rails, NodeJS) I have had a very difficult time finding work this year. It's certainly more difficult now than in 2012 or 2013.

[cpprototypes]

I had no issue interpreting the likely intended meaning of this: This person is saying they have been keeping up with new technologies the past 14 years (such as RoR, NodeJS now, but years ago Java held that spot, etc.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity helps here especially these days when typing on a mobile phone can easily lead to typos and mistakes.

[altano]

Neither Ruby on Rails nor NodeJS has existed for 14 years.

[kafkaesq]

She was simplifying; most likely she meant:

"I have 14 years of commercial experience overall, with recent emphasis in high-demand technologies like RoR and Node.js"

[jgroch]

yet FORTRAN and COBOL do

and so do reams of magnetic tape around the Beltway

who will maintain old code? you?

[MOARDONGZPLZ]

The poster specifically mentioned 14 years with these technologies. The fact that there are technologies 14+ years old is irrelevant to this point.

[logfromblammo]

You can parse that statement in a more favorable way. She has spent 14 years acquiring experience with relatively new (or newly popular) technologies.

So 14 years ago, she would have worked with a technology that is now slightly more than 14 years old--I'd guess C#, which is now 16 years old. Maybe 9 years ago, she worked with Ruby on Rails, which is now 10 years old. Maybe 6 years ago, she started on Node.js, which is now 7 years old. Even now, she is likely keeping an eye on HN to see what would be most useful to learn next.

In other words, she has been continuously jogging on the technology treadmill, rather than staking out a niche to ride out until retirement.

This is likely the only way to avoid moving to progressively stodgier and less interesting companies as you age. The young and hip companies use the young and hip tech stacks. Established companies wait to see whether the new thing can cut costs or increase revenues before migrating, and part of that equation is not paying a premium for specialist developers that are currently in high demand.

[auggierose]

Replace "with" with "including" and all the strange comments to this post evaporate. Every experienced programmer knows what is meant by this. By the way, anyone experienced picks up Node.js in a week.

[bfung]

It's interesting to see so many comments on an imprecise wording of a sentence.

As humans, people can parse this sentence and infer the thinking and meaning behind it.

The related part of the problem with this the difficulty in finding a position is that computers and compilers cannot infer meaning - the statement must be exact (not precise, not accurate, exact). And for a programmer, making such logical gaffes is detrimental to speed and quality of a particular piece of work.

Could be unfair in assessing one as such, but a line of reasoning here does exist that I believe to be testable and valid. And life isn't fair.

Perhaps a piece to help you in finding a position better is to form the idea first, then reword it for the right audience (for programmers, be exacting, don't leave room for interpretation).

[mgkimsal]

do you think it's anything to do with the name "susan"?

[jgroch]

I don't know why you've been grayed out.

Skills are skills. Even if you don't have the latest iPhone or Android flavor TangoUniformVoo 8.9.

Considering that i'm a bit rusty (no allusion intended), if i'm certified in Sun's Java 1.5/5.0, can i still program in OracleJava, and what about Google'sJava? ....Though maybe it takes a little bit of elbow grease and sharp elbows to push the script-kiddies currently in HRManagement aside.

[eitland]

>> Though I have 14 years experience with technologies that are suppose to be in demand (Ruby On Rails, NodeJS)

> I don't know why you've been grayed out.

Because we oldtimers know that ruby on rails and especially node.js hasn't existed for 14years. Ruby on rails had it's first stable release about 11 years ago.

Actually used to be a recruiter joke/meme : young rails wizard wanted, minimum 10 years experience (back before 2005 :-)

That said, I didn't downvote, but I suspect this is the reason.

Edit: removed this, I might have misread the post as pointed out by others -> (not being careful with facts, massive hyperbole)

[reitanqild]

Joke or mistake?