The single-story house I grew up in in south San Jose, CA had a stucco exterior. This is essentially a concrete-like material spread over chicken wire (hexagonal poultry netting) that is tacked onto the structure. An artistic texturing of the surface is applied as a final step. After drying, it is primed and painted.
The structure was about 30 years old when it became infested with subterranean and flying termites, and required fumigation and major repairs to sill joists and pilings. It took a lot of time, money, and effort to repair it. The land was formerly a cherry orchard.
I started in tech at 17 with my own consulting company so an exhaustive, over-sharing resume would make me appear nearing retirement. What I do is conceal my true age (early 40's, M) and experience through creative resume sculpting. It helps that I look 10 years younger so I will experience delayed-but-inevitable discrimination until the marketing wank that is a resume can no longer maintain a too much plastic surgery, Botox facade.
Coincidentally, it may help that I am involved in an age gap relationship with a gorgeous, lovely woman in her early 20's. My Machiavellian plan is to drag her to any and all work and coworker gatherings to reinforce that I'm not a ye olde farten just yet. You can get more social currency by demonstrating you're in a relationship with someone and more so if they're attractive.
One has to adapt to the biases and reality for survival. Lie about your age if it ever comes up. Lie downward about your experience too. Fuck their discriminatory bullshit.
i know a career-agent from a job-center that told me the same thing after he had witnessed many qualified and experienced engineers beeing rejected because of age- or buzzword-based discrimination.
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."
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.
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.
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.
Honestly, I thought the term was "cowboy coder," but maybe my vernacular is archaic.
Not to pile-on, but I don't understand the bizarre disparagement of computer science. There are far too many programmers, hermit or otherwise, who don't know what big-O notation is, which data structure(s) to choose in a particular scenario based on requirements, algorithm design, or the Church–Turing conjecture. I would also add variations of software engineering methodologies are obligatory knowledge of a professional programmer for situations like using strict, formalized waterfall development in life-safety systems. Credentialed Professional Engineers supervising and/or implementing critically-important code are also Good Things in such situations too.
Mostly Trimble Navigation Ltd. gear. They're built like tanks and well past IP67 because they're also used in mines on enormous equipment.
Disclaimer: I used to work on the TRIMMARK and TRIMCOMM series firmware in the radio group. With kinematic (moving differential-capable) corrections plus a fixed base station, horizontal accuracy is sub cm (10 mm) and vertical is sub meter. Two receivers, one on either side of the vehicle, can be used to accurately guide the side-to-side angle of plowing, grading, or other activities.
https://youtu.be/gqht2bIQXIY
Doing "something" is futile if it's ineffective, not permanent, and not scalable.