[vk6flab]

I've been in the workforce for almost 40 years as an ICT professional. In my experience there's lots of other things going on in addition to the point you make.

People flat-out don't believe that the skills enumerated on my resume could be held by a single person, and are.

Apparently, I'm clearly "over the hill", having been at this for nearly 40 years. I should state that I have 20+ years experience instead, as-if having life experience doesn't actually make you better qualified to understand the contexts of any role in an organisation.

My skill-set is "threatening" to others, because, apparently, knowing things about a great many technologies means that I know more than the person hiring me, which somehow means that I'm a threat. As-if surrounding yourself by people who are smarter than you is suddenly undesirable.

I've been told to "dumb down" my resume because there's too much there, even if there's 99% chance that a computer will be the device actually reading it and selecting me. Apparently I'm supposed to "infiltrate" a company at a lower level and then "show" them that I can do more, despite 40 years experience showing that people only see the skills that they want to see.

According to some automated job technologies I have 104 years of experience. Not sure how that works.

Then there are those who want to know which of the experience is "professional" and which isn't. (I've been self-employed for the past 23+ years)

In the end, I liken it to this:

"How much experience do you have in eating food?"

"Do you mean, adding together each of the 15 minute meals, or how long have I been eating food for since I was born?"

"Okay, how much professional experience do you have eating food?"

"..."

[HenryBemis]

I have a similar blessing/problem. I've filled forms that do the additions and keep you in check that you don't end up with 104 years. On the other hand, if you are anything like me you spend a good amount of these 40 years working 10-12 hours per day (and some times the weekend)(I remember in 2001-2003 I was working in a food company and during some weekends we would be doing the hardware work, so removing servers, installing new ones, setting up new racks etc. So those 3 years were in reality 4 or 4.5 (and I got the paid overtime to prove it).

The "system" still serves the ones who grow vertically Junior X, X, Senior X, Junior X Manager, X Manager, Senior X Manager, and so on. I remember listening to DOAC chatting with Harley Finkelstein of Shopify that was describing how he appreciates T-shaped skill-set. So you master skill X (as you 'grew up with it') but as time was going by you also developed other skills in parallel.

Modern companies & minds get it and celebrate it. Old-school-ers don't (and probably never will). There is also the thing "I want him/her to do X, so (e.g.) project management skills are not useful". And then I am happy when I hear this on an interview because I most definitely do NOT want to work with that person! :)