I have had several jobs in 15 years. My experince in some of the more advanced software has kept me employeed or helped get a job sooner. It is not a guarantee of employment; but not keeping up with the time puts your higher on the layoff list and lower on the re-hire list. -peace
Actually, what got me re-hired was not tech skills but business ones - knowledge of particular business data, along with a broad skill set in just about every area of IT that allows me to design QA processes for anything that crosses my desk. And I do agree that some programmers simply don' keep their skills current. But that isn't what is happening here - folks with some very marketable job skills are not finding work, and there are significant job shifts across the employment spectrum that do not bode well for a robust middle class in this country. And, given the importance of a middle class for political stability, one would think the federal government would consider it to be a top interest in staunching the blood flow from this change, instead of the current policy of administering anticoagulants to it.