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I am a professional software engineer and I've recently begun to update my resume. All told, I think I have a nice collection of accomplishments and technical know-how. My big concern is to avoid giving the impression of someone whose career is stagnating. I've held a number of positions at approximately the same level, so the sense of career progression might appear just a little bit weak if one focuses only on job titles.

I am thinking of minimizing or even removing at least some of my experiences which took place more than ten years ago. In addition to helping reduce the “stagnation factor,” this would give me more space to add my latest accomplishments without pushing the length beyond two-and-one-half pages, and help with the age-perception factor (not a huge concern since I come across as pretty young in person).

Is it appropriate and advisable to remove those old experiences completely? If instead I simply minimize them, would something like the following work well? Thanks in advance for your advice!

**job #1** 
<bullet list of details...>

**job #2**
<bullet list of details...>

[etc.]

**Prior software development positions**
Foo Bar, Inc., New York, NY 2003-2006
Lorem Ipsum, LLC, Chicago, IL 2003
Etaoin Shrdlu, Ltd., Miami, FL 1999-2003
Biz Baz Corp., Boston, MA, 1998
Clarity_20
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1 Answers1

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Information more than 10 years old for a tech resume is considered irrelevant. I can install windows 3.1 and Windows 95, for example. Just use the most recent 10 years, and if you must, put down other relevant experience under "additional experience".

Agism is a real thing in IT, so you don't want to go back too far and show that you're older than 35.

Old_Lamplighter
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    Yep, I'm 36 and beginning to feel the sting of age discrimination. As an engineer I've never been better and have been continuously improving throughout my career , but landing an offer these days is hard. It seems employers aren't interested in experience anymore, just cheap "code monkeys." – James Adam Aug 04 '16 at 13:25
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    @JamesAdam I'm closing in on 50. After I hit 40 it got very hard. a friend of mine couldn't find any work after he hit 55. Also, unlike other fields, our skills become obsolete very quickly, at least the ones we can list on a resume. – Old_Lamplighter Aug 04 '16 at 14:00
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    @JamesAdam & Richard, I think there's 2 aspects to this: 1) many people rely on a limited skill set their whole careers, and after a while that's just not enough anymore. They are not the sort of people who strive to keep up with their field, and give everyone a bad name. I work with a guy who's 35 but is almost 5-8 years behind on technology. He's had this job for 8 yrs, and hasn't learned ANY new technology - doesn't even know the basics of Javascript. 2) After you've gained a whole bunch of experience you become more expensive to hire. A young graduate is cheap and eager to learn. – AndreiROM Aug 04 '16 at 14:32
  • @AndreiROM In IT domain, development, it's not only the skill that have changed, but the whole world of development, how we though, how we organize that have change. For old IT men, Current way of developping have nothing to do with what it used to be. Most of my current colleague are 50+ here. Most of them only know how to make their thing working, they don't really know how to efficiently use OOP, make code maintenable. At best they know how to modelize datas, not the software. – Walfrat Aug 04 '16 at 14:48
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    @AndreiROM In my career, I found it quite the opposite. I've done everything from hacking hardware to programming, to databases, as have my contemporaries. When we started back in the 1970s and 1980s, you HAD to be able to do everything. – Old_Lamplighter Aug 04 '16 at 16:04
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    @Walfrat Now that was rather insulting. The current way of developing has it's flaws and has been too eager to leave behind some of the basics like structure, meaningful names, lean code, efficient code, documentation (gone the way of the dinosaur). You may want to rethink your prejudices, as this old man just showed the youngsters a thing or two by recoding an application that took run time from 10 hours to under 10 minutes. – Old_Lamplighter Aug 04 '16 at 16:07
  • @RichardU, and you forgot understanding of the database instead of relying on an ORM. – HLGEM Aug 04 '16 at 18:05
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    @HLGEM I stopped myself before I went to far and ended up telling the kids to stay off my lawn. But seriously, yes, That and letting the tool best suited for the work do the work. As you know, the older technologies are harder to use, but give more control as well. Heck, take the GUI away from the kids and let them try to write out the SQL. – Old_Lamplighter Aug 04 '16 at 18:29
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    @RichardU, my problem with ORMs is that they are fine for CRUD or for people who have the judgement to know when they need to write the query themselves. They are disastrous for beginners in data work. And if you don't ever learn to write the simple queries, are you really going to start with that reporting query that joins to 12 tables and has complex logic? HOw can you hope to succeed then, if the details of what SQL needs to be have always been hidden from you. – HLGEM Aug 04 '16 at 18:54
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    @walfrat - I've met young apparently "experienced" people (ie, 20-somethings with several years of working development) who barely even "know how to make their thing working", "don't really know how to efficiently use OOP", or "make code maintainable" - so what's your point? – HorusKol Aug 04 '16 at 22:32