This is just the way it is. Deal with it! Get in the game or GTFO the field.

Sure, having the fire in your belly can mitigate much if not most of the "crochety" factor as can staying on the bleeding edge of coding and problem solving. But... if <insert random industry> didn't do this, if the biggest worry was keeping the old farts employed and coddling their irrelevance, <insert random industry> would NEVER progress. The US would be last in the world for meaningful product or service disruptions that every other country strives for.

Again, at 42 with 16 years in technology, I'm one of the old farts. Skills that once got me the coveted double eyebrow raise and an extra digit on my bonus check, now get me the loathed single eyebrow raise and a comfy slot on the next RIF list.

The union between a company and its employee base can be compared to a youthful first marriage between 20-somethings. Almost as soon as you say "I do", subconsciously, your will and desire to improve, to change, to grow starts to decline. You get fat. Your spouse gets fat. You gradually stop going out with friends or trying new things. Squirt out a couple of pups and you can pretty much write the excuses for why you can't do "this" or "that" in stone.

The world is dynamic and the Indians, the Chinese, the South Americans, the Koreans, the Russians, pick your own example -- all of them -- understand this as a simple fact of life. From the moment they wake in the morning to the second their head hits the dirt floor at night, they are mentally and emotionally pounded with the relentless concept that they are NOT in first place. They are NOT the leader. They have miles and miles and miles to go before they can even begin to break into the same stratosphere of "advancement" that Westernized nations have taken for granted for the last 100 years. We provide for them a marker. A goal. A far-off, seemingly impossible to reach objective of what is possible when you push yourselves to limits you never knew you were capable of conquering.

So, no. I don't feel sorry for the elder statesmen of <insert random industry>, and I'm even one of them. The very second I see my career plight as someone else's fault or the responsibility of something I can't control, I have already lost. I might as well close up shop and get my blue Wal-Mart vest on. Start practicing "would you like fry's with that". No. My position in technology is my responsibility. My relevance in comparison with you wiry fuckers 25 years my junior is 120% totally and without question not only my own responsibility, but my own choice. The truth is, if given even moderately comparable skills to you young lads on an interview, I have a leg up. I can run circles around the kids who still rent apartments and are still making payments on their first car. I have the benefit of patience that you only get from trying to do the same thing over and over 1000 times. I am more forward thinking, maybe not in terms of what the next Google is going to be, but in terms of execution, I can see things down the road that the whippersnappers can't see -- because they're not old enough to have seen the writing on the wall before.

No. I am old (in Internet years), but I am not a victim. And when industry moves forward without me, the blame lies on me and MY decision to keep up. You young kids do have your uses though. You keep me and my ilk on our toes and are anything but shy about how fast and nimble I have to be to keep up.