[jnorthrop]

I agree with your sentiment. I was 51 when I last applied for a job at a new company. Initially I was getting very little interest in my resume. Then I cut out the first 10 years of my career from my resume (and LinkedIn), and downgraded the oldest position listed from a Senior Lead to just a developer -- essentially making me appear 40 instead of 50. Within a couple of weeks I started getting responses.

And it is not like my work from 1990-2000 wasn't valuable. I worked on a complex large scale analytics system in the early 90's and migrated to large scale web-based applications in the later half of the decade. I'm proud of that work and have some interesting lessons and stories from that time period, but they are telltale of my age and were working against me.

[zdragnar]

From the perspective of someone who has been on the hiring side, I see this a bit differently.

Senior developer positions are more common now, in part from title inflation but also the rise of more complex online interactions and businesses. By cutting the senior bit out of your resume, you no longer look overqualified for the more numerous junior / "regular" developer positions.

While your work from the 90's is likely very interesting, for many companies the soft skills and lessons learned will be more applicable to whatever role they have available, best included as a summary.

I promise that most hiring managers aren't going to read a 10 page resume, or even a 4 page one. 9 times out of 10, they just want to answer a simple question: should the team take time to find out more about this candidate? If the first page of your resume doesn't answer that, it likely won't make the cut.

On a final note, "30 years experience" really isn't a great sign. I have indeed worked with the type of person who has basically had the same experience over and over for 30 years, not growing, learning new technical or leadership skills, etc. That is totally fine for many positions, but it is mark against them for many others.

[_moof]

I was told it's unusual to include more than ten years of work history on your resume in most fields. So I stop at ten years now and don't include dates on my degrees, and I haven't had any trouble. It helps that I've somewhat deliberately kept learning new things at every job (otherwise I get bored!).

And of course it's BS that this is necessary. But until the entire culture shifts I'll just keep doing what I'm doing and then telling people how old I am after I've signed the offer.

[InvaderFizz]

I've taken largely the same approach. Soon to be pushing 40, but my LinkedIn makes it look like I'm about 30 due to dropping off early career jobs.

I also strategically drop items from my resume that I no longer wish to touch. Cuts down on recruiter spam significantly in the process.

[cyberge99]

I put them under a Projects/Misc/Other heading without a date (though the tech may out you).

[stooliepidgin]

Ageism is real. It's not some sour grapes of under-performers who let their skills decline, or move or think at a dotard pace. It's essentially "We don't want anyone old because old = bad, new = good."

[ozim]

I think it is a lot about under-performers that want to hang onto their "years of experience" as a selling point and being angry that there is not much of a market for "years of experience" only.

Maybe they were not under-performers 10-15 or 20 years ago, but if someone gives 20 pages of resume and most of it happened in 90's I would not be interested. Because it is quite easy to see such person is hanging onto his past performance like Al Bundy to his 4 touchdowns in high school.

If someone would be 50yrs old or even 60 but his last couple of years are taking most of resume and they did interesting work at that age I would be curious to talk to such person.

It is not that they would need to have latest frameworks or libraries listed on the CV. It is more about if they did meaningful work in last year and not that they did meaningful work 20 years ago and now they are just hanging around doing whatever.

[greyhair]

So my resume concentrates on the last five years, with the prior 30+ being mere bullet items, in the event you want to ask. You are correct that no one really cares about what you have done outside the last five years.

[ozim]

Of course my comment is not about anyone personally and I expect there is a lot of people who are doing just fine and are reasonable.

But then under performers are interviewing more so they cast bad impression on others that are their age/ethnicity whatever.

Just like the saying good developers are not on the market for long and one that make good impression are hired quickly.

[stooliepidgin]

This is also true. Definitely can't slack off on the couch with a hand in their pants. Even someone with little experience can become perpetually stuck starting at the beginning of their career in low performance if they don't push themselves towards excellence. Slacking off at any point leads to a downward spiral of decay.