Luckily for folks with outdated skillsets, you can learn and practice almost anything in software these days for free from the net. Back in the day you might have had to go back to school, now it's a matter of buckling down and brushing up on your Rails.

You need an incredibly high level of computer literacy first though.

I don't think we're talking about people who have never programmed before; we're talking about maybe COBOL and Fortran experts, or people who write low-level C but can only find Python and Ruby jobs.

Are we really at the point where engineers can't find jobs because they only know C++ instead of Python and Ruby web stacks?

This is a bit concerning, if so.

It happens. I used to work with a guy whose expertise was Java GUI development and who knew NOTHING about web stacks at all. He's been looking for work, and kept getting told that it was a big problem that he didn't know anything about web development. Someone even told him in an interview that he was getting dangerously close to the "point of no return" where his skills were so stale that he'd be unemployable anywhere else.

I spent a lot of late nights helping him come up to speed because he's not a bad guy. Even though he probably should have been doing this himself, the fact of the matter is that he chose poorly and now knows a lot about something that is growing less and less valuable every day. You can say that he's not an "engineer" but that's really just the No True Scotsman fallacy talking. It's really hard to compete on the job market when hiring managers just cut out huge swathes of your knowledge a priori, and the fact that happens is what concerns me.

Web stack replacing "Java GUI" is no big surprise, and totally dissimilar to the great-grandparent comment that implied that there might be a shortage of low-level C jobs. Python and Ruby have not eaten C/C++'s lunch, as far as I know (well, maybe snacked on it a bit). OSes, browsers, games, embedded... still seems to be lots of call for C/C++. Java GUI was never in that class, so it's not at all surprising to see it obsolesce.

True, but the best engineers are the ones that can adapt to new skillsets quickly.

For example, I'm willing to bet that 99% of the most successful iOS developers had not written a line of Objective-C until 3 years ago. Apple simply provided an opportunity and they embraced it, learning the skills they need to adapt.

It varies based on location. The unrealistic "we require 5 years experience in a technology that's 3 years old" HR people still exit. Even more common is N years of desktop app programming experience counting as 0 years of web programming experience (regardless of platform).

I hope not. I have worked quite a bit on Python/Django but I am considering diving into C++ due my recent exposure of the wonderful world of graphics programming (not game development but simulation and visualization).

Nobody is going to penalize you for being the Django guy who can also hack complex C++ and knows his way around OpenGL/DirectX. Far from it, you'll look like a guy with a truly broad skill-set who can handle damn near anything.

The guys who are having trouble are the guys who decided that the knowledge they needed for their 9-5 C job was "good enough" so they stopped learning. That's what kills careers.

Stopping learning is an issue, but employment reality is more complicated. In much of the country the guy who can hack both Django, C++ and OpenGL is unemployable, and the guy who turned his brain off after getting his MCSE can easily find a job. For instance, this is a pretty typical snapshot of who's hiring in my part of the country:

http://cl.ly/2T01382O3v3L3a1x1n2r

Individual locales can have particular niche demands or simply end up as technical backwaters where employability depends entirely on your familiarity with, say VB 6.

That's mostly, I think, an argument for moving out of technical backwaters if you're in a technical career. If you let yourself be limited to skills that are more valuable in Minneapolis than the major tech hubs, you're eventually going to be stuck with skills that aren't even valuable in Minneapolis, as the "hot" tech hub technologies become mainstream and finally migrate there way out to the backwaters.

No, and COBOL and Fortran experts are being handed blank cheques if they truly are expert (and sometimes even if they're not... how fast can you read? ;))

No, there is still a lot of C & C++ jobs out there. However COBOL might be another matter...

That was just an example I pulled out of my a^Hhat.

But that's their point. When you have people with no jobs, that counts for the unemployment. But even I know how difficult it is to find people to hire for our company as I do HR for a technology firm. There is a high demand, just shortage of people to fill the positions.

I see an increasing unwillingness of companies to train people who don't have EXACTLY the right skillset. This used be different in the 90s.

Which, as far as I can see, has led to a vicious circle where developers will often refuse/bitch/complain about working on something that doesn't increase their immediate employability prospects. Not to mention CVs that quite often have a half a page or so of solid acronyms to increase the chances of being found by simplistic recruiting company search engines.

I agree. I think the logic is: "if we train them, they'll go find better paying jobs, and besides, as soon as this project is done, everyone will be laid off anyway." So everyone only wants to hire exact fit.

My experience differs - I think it was in fact the rule of thumb in the 90s... until the dotcom gold rush got sufficiently out of hand that hiring people and training them became the only reasonable solution.

This can also be a function of density of capable talent where you are. I know in my area it can take a while to get a technology position (took me 8 months) due to there being very intense competition. However I did receive more than one offer to an area that I could not afford to relocate to due to other issues (mostly taxes). It seems like there are some great disparities in where the talent is and where the jobs are. The solution would seem to be for someone (people or the company) to move or to find a way for people to be able to work from a larger area around the business.