[hawkice]

My advice is to play up the experience, but play down some details of that experience. For instance, 40 years of COBOL and C++ has some signalling issues (not completely unreasonably, what with carpenters blaming shoddy tools). I'd probably not talk about the technical nature of the experience at all -- just say the industry it was for and what the tool was used for, and not name-dropping old technologies.

Also, outside of SF, the ageism is much much milder. I've had people who had the up/down control on me getting hired not know my age to within 15 years at the time they make that choice (and they consistently guessed _older_ than I am). But interviews in SF seem to bring this topic to the table almost immediately. YMMV.

In terms of being uniquely identifiable (and therefore having few secrets) in the job application process, this is essentially unavoidable. I wouldn't worry about it.

[O____________O]

40 years of COBOL and C++ has some signalling issues

Today is the first time I've seen C++ mentioned alongside COBOL. Today is a dark day...

[hawkice]

To respond to this and the sibling comment: That was meant to be 40 years split in a first-COBOL-then-C++ type of way. I wasn't attempting to draw any technical equivalency per se, merely a quazi-cultural one.

[dinkumthinkum]

I doubt anyone has 40 years of C++ .... But that's part of the point here. I think a lot of what people are saying is junk. If you want to work as some hipster startup for low pay, there is a high probability that they are looking for you to talk about web framework du jour. However, there are plenty of adults working at companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and thousands of smaller companies that last longer than three years ...

[loumf]

44 year old programmer here -- I keep hoping that one day C++ won't matter, but I keep getting jobs (at startups) partly because I know it well.