Nobody can claim that the IT job market overflows with skills and experience — so it is doubly criminal that recruiters and managers are so reluctant to keep on the more mature worker, let alone hire them in the first place. As for those workers worried by redundancy, outsourcing and the ever-growing pensions squeeze, it can be hard to know how to market oneself in a business where the new trumps the good at every turn.

It's an unfashionable suggestion, but companies must look to academia. There, long experience of venerable experts has led to a variety of strategies: professors emeritus, consultative committees, part-time posts. These people are the memory of the industry, and it is both healthy and important that they continue to contribute.

The workers themselves must organise, categorise their skills and make the most of their flexibility. They have much to offer of immediate importance: if a company is trying to force a client onto a new platform by withdrawing support for the old, then a consultancy offering thousands of years cumulative experience on that platform could be a tempting option.