I guess I need to figure out how to do this without it being obvious.

Just don't put years worked at a job on the resume. I never have and I've never been asked. Most relevant jobs go first.

I was always told obfuscating the dates and/or going with a "functional" resume just screamed "old" :)

I was taught to leave the month off your start and end dates of previous positions when applying for a job. Still don’t know if this is a good idea or not, but at the very least it opens up another dialog tree with potential employers. Seems to have worked fine for me, but who knows. The rationale was “it’s less information to parse”. Might be just a superstition.

Interviewers always ask for more specifics anyways, which is good because you can use that as an opportunity to jump into things you accomplished near the end of a job, or at the beginning of another.

I wasn't taught to do this, but also do it. I doubt it helps or hurts either way.

If you want recommendations on what to avoid, an 8 page resume that starts out by listing your high school summer job in the 1960's is the best anti-example I've seen.

> obfuscating the dates

I don't put dates on at all. I never have, even when I was 20.

It’s gonna take time. Don’t lose hope.

And all the 5-7 year devs who no-hire senior folks, will eventually find themselves being no-hired when they hit the 15 year mark.

when I say erase years, I mean I remove positions, not hide the years

I just keep the last 5 years of work on my resume and delete the earlier ones

"senior engineer" is like 2 years of work experience anyway, it doesn't matter.

Then for your education section, do you keep the dates there, or remove those dates?

If its present at all I remove the dates

Only APAC companies have asked though, haven’t really bothered with European companies

If you have a CS degree it doesn’t matter what the gap is there to where your years of job experience begins, assuming degree is before experience starts

For most software positions, I’d omit the dates for school, and just note the institution and the degree you obtained. Unless it’s your first job or you’re still working on your degree. You can use dates as filler, but after 1 or 2 positions, in my experience (as an interviewer and interviewee) it tends to be better to sacrifice such details so you can elaborate more on work experience and projects, whilst keeping the resumé a single page. Or put the year on the same line as the school and degree, if you care.