Tech has a funny relationship with experience.
When you're young, every job ad seems to want five years of experience for something you've only been doing for two.
Then you finally get the experience.
Twenty years later, apparently you have too much. 😅
That's when words like "overqualified" start appearing.
It's an interesting problem.
Someone in their late 40s or 50s could easily have another 10 or 15 productive working years ahead. They know the industry. They've managed difficult projects. They've made mistakes, fixed them and hopefully learned which mistakes shouldn't be repeated.
Yet finding the next role can actually become harder.
Part of it is probably money. Companies assume experienced people expect bigger salaries.
Part of it is organisational structure. There are simply fewer senior positions as you move up.
And part of it may be how quickly tech worships whatever is new.
New programming language. New platform. New AI tool. New certification.
Suddenly, 20 years of experience can look less exciting than someone whose CV contains this year's hottest technology.
But experience in technology isn't only about knowing old technology.
A good senior professional has seen patterns.
They've watched the "next big thing" arrive several times.
They know a beautiful PowerPoint architecture can become a disaster during implementation. They know vendors occasionally oversell. They know projects that look green on dashboards can still be very red underneath.
That's why the discussion around the career trap facing experienced technology and cybersecurity professionals is worth thinking about.
Of course, experience alone isn't enough.
Nobody should expect the industry to value 20 years of experience if the last five years were spent avoiding anything new.
You still have to learn.
Maybe that's the deal.
Younger professionals bring new skills, different thinking and fewer assumptions.
Experienced professionals bring judgement, context and a long collection of "we tried something like this before" stories.
Tech probably needs both.
Because being experienced shouldn't mean you've reached the end of your career.
Sometimes it simply means you've finally learned which problems are actually worth solving.
