I've recently given up a 20-year tenure as the head of an IT section, and taken a demotion, to get back to what I want to be doing, what makes me excited to go to work each day: development. So that it's a normal day, not some kind of special treat, to be up to my elbows in code.

My education and experience are focused not on any single language, platform, or methodology, but on being able to pick up and run with whatever happens to be needed to do the next project. As I've been mired in supporting legacy systems and doing management for a while, I have less experience with a lot of the hot trends of recent years, but as I can learn them easily, I'm using my free time to refresh my skills. Each time I pick a language or platform or methodology and teach it to myself, within a month of evenings I'm able to design and create a complete application in it.

Sadly, when you're applying for jobs, so many employers only want to know how many years you've been working in NextBigThing, and they dismiss claims that you can learn it easily, in part because everyone makes that claim -- even the wet-behind-the-ears kids who haven't been around long to put it to the test. That's bad for me, but it's bad for employers, too. The stuff I don't know, you can learn in school or on-the-job, but the stuff I've learned in 25-30 years in the field, both about technology and about work itself, those fresh young hot-shots can't learn and can't fake any of it. It's not the years, it's the mileage.