Yes, and what's worse, hiring and firing involves people who seldom understand the issues involved.

How often have you spoken with HR people who could "read" a CV but couldn't recognize that PASCAL and 'C' are HLL's, or that Ethernet is a LAN, or that an 8032 is equivalent to an 8052 in most ways? How many HR people know that "programmable logic" includes both CPLD's and FPGA's but that it also includes PAL's, GAL's, PROM's, etc?

It makes it very difficult for HR people to understand the difference between "accomplishment" as listed in the CV and competence, or lack of it. Just because one has survived a project doesn't actually mean one has meaningfully contributed to it.

The economy, worldwide, being as it it, one can only hope that such matters will be driven to the surface, and the ones who have relied throughout their careers on "the kindness of others" will become unemployed, therefore unburdening the teams in which they've hidden all their working lives.

RE