It is probably not intentional that your company is actively killing your skill set or maybe it is. A better view is that they refuse to train you in any new technologies because of your age, or the fact that their applications you are maintaining are hopeless out of date, or change is not something that they want to embrace for business reasons.
Many years ago when my former partner discussed where the U2 (Universe and Unidata) industry is going, he believed that we would always make money as consultants. Since most of our clients we were their IT department that seemed like a safe statement. When the economy does is down cycle, then the first people that are out of work are the consultants whether you are running your clients business software or not.
Our U2 world with its plethora of "green screen" applications with the accompany tool sets written by staff that has a lot of learning to do. Whether it is education of the current IT department, with seminars, or in-house training, or even enrolling in University sponsored, management must embrace it.
Enrolling in U2 University is a start. But the learning at U2U is more of a walkthrough of current technology and will not help those who do not know what data objects are or even there is a format called JSON. The web, the resource at your fingertips, is the best place to start. Some programmers spend hours and hours reading articles and taking on-line study guides.
In summary, your company has a lot responsibility to have you highly trained. But the question is will they spend the money? More importantly, you have to push you company to embrace new technology and you have to have gained the knowledge to help them along this course.
