I have been thinking about this a bit lately as I enter my 'mid-career' stage and am contemplating a minor career shift (same industry, different specialization). Also, I have some recent experience that was rather illuminating regarding agism in the industry.<p>1. The pool of older programmers is a little bit 'lemony'. The "really talented ones" either move up into cushy roles, move into freelancing/consulting, or start their own thing, etc., so they won't be applying to random job listings. And most 'good to average' individuals will build up a solid professional network throughout their career and if done properly they should have an easy-ish time finding and getting new roles. So that leaves folks who are a) for some reason their network doesn't extend to the job they want (maybe they are trying to switch fields, or they are targeting a small company with no mutual connections) or b) they are a lemon (to put it politely). And to complicate matters, the standard programming quizzes/whiteboard interview doesn't work too well on more experienced programmers. Their raw programming knowledge/ability is usually good enough, generally the issue is with something else (slow, hard to work with etc..).<p>2. If you are an ambitious 20/30 something doing the hiring, unless you have really good 'job security' (like best friends with the founder or some other leverage) then it's probably easier to hire folks with less experience who won't challenge you for your role. This is somewhat an extension of the 'A's hire A's, B's hire C's' mantra, but on the axis of seniority and experience as opposed to talent. There are plenty of senior programmers that are comfortable being an IC under a younger manager, but there are also plenty that would happily jump on the management track and climb right over you if the opportunity was there. And the 20/30 something manager won't know which one they hired until its' too late.<p>3. There are plenty of industries and opportunities where seniority and experience is respected, and many of these industries are hiring programmers. You just have to look outside of the SV bubble. Banking, Healthcare, Energy, Construction, etc... And because a lot of these industries operate in more regulated and bureaucratic environments the 'SV 10x ninja' is just not that useful. And some of the 'lemons' mentioned above, who don't fit the SV mold, but who are perfectly serviceable employees in most regards would probably do fine in these environments.<p>I also think we are starting to age out of the 'high school dropout gets $20M in funding' era, which exacerbated the agism-in-programming issue. That sort or worked in consumer web/app tech, but tends to fail spectacularly everywhere else. So at the very least this 'post-40s' agism will probably start to fade, and likely get replaced with the 'post-60's'