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Is the market hot or do people with 20 years of experience have to still work on additional signals like a portfolio / github profile / side projects?

Those things seem necessary as a way to signal competence when you're lacking other signals like experience or education.

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I've got 20 years of experience and have never bothered with side projects, portfolios or the like. You have to have the confidence to pitch your real experience and let it shine on your CV and at interview, both from a technical and people point of view. That's what hiring managers are looking for from someone who has been in the business for a while.

If you get rejected because you don't have a recent GitHub project, that's their loss, and they don't know what they're missing.

20 yrs experience? Nobody cares. That not a benefit. It's a feature. No one cares about features.

Skills X, Y and/or Z?

Ability to A, B and/or C?

These are more important. Whether it 20 yrs, or more, or less. No one cares.

I didn't mean to say 20+ yrs of experience is an advantage. Its the other way around. My worry is that the application may not even be considered because of 20+ yrs of experience. Skill can be proved only after getting an interview.

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