Of course you're not going to get a job writing assembly, if that's really all you can/are willing to do you probably aren't the type of person I'd want to hire, even if the job was to write assembly.
I'm 24 and work with plenty of older guys. One of them always makes fun of us mac developers because he was writing mac software before we were born and OS X isn't a "real" mac. He doesn't sit around complaining about the good old days of assembly, he learns new things. His experience follows the tech industry pretty closely as it moved from assembly to c to c++, etc. Now he writes Android apps.
The point is that older guys only become irrelevant by choice. Programming is an industry with almost no up front cost to get started on. Anyone with a computer can do it. Instead of these guys going to town hall meetings, why don't they brush up on their development skills and learn something new?
"Instead of these guys going to town hall meetings, why don't they brush up on their development skills and learn something new?"
If those specific unemployed people all went home and learned Android development, most of them still wouldn't be hired, anywhere, not in tech (because they're old and unemployed) and not in "survival" jobs (because they're old, and they'll leave when they find something better). They're garbage as far as the economy is concerned. That the practice of refusing to consider unemployed people for hiring is common enough to warrant discussion partially supports that.
Just add the "freelancer" line to your resume and voila, you've no longer been unemployed for a few years. This also assumes that you've been doing something that could qualify as freelancing like working on some phone apps or a website or something.
If you've been sitting on your ass for 2 years, yeah it's going to look pretty bad to employers.
This works outside the computer related industry as well. I was made redundant from a managerial job in teaching. I did some authoring of e-learning materials, did some sessional work (fee paid teaching) for a couple of local institutions, then found a salaried job within six months. At no time was I officially unemployed. My CV is seamless.
If they've been sitting on their ass. But when the economy tanked, a lot of people took the money they saved during the boom years and traveled the world. Or learned a new programming language. Or built something useful. So 2 year gaps in work history shouldn't be a deal killer. If they are, the system is truly, tragically broken.
I'm 24 and work with plenty of older guys. One of them always makes fun of us mac developers because he was writing mac software before we were born and OS X isn't a "real" mac. He doesn't sit around complaining about the good old days of assembly, he learns new things. His experience follows the tech industry pretty closely as it moved from assembly to c to c++, etc. Now he writes Android apps.
The point is that older guys only become irrelevant by choice. Programming is an industry with almost no up front cost to get started on. Anyone with a computer can do it. Instead of these guys going to town hall meetings, why don't they brush up on their development skills and learn something new?