Not true. If your skills are relevant it is so easy to find work writing code. The guys who run into problems are those who get laid off and then realize they have not improved their skills in over a decade. I just had lunch today with a former co-worker who is very gainfully employed and it pushing 60. Before I left my previous job we were tasked with building a Salesforce app that integrated with a SAAS application we were working on. Neither of us had ever done anything with Salesforce and we had a slick app built in no time. The "young bucks" on our team could not have pulled that off.
Thanks for sharing. Interesting read. I tend to agree re age. As long as an individual attempts to stay relevant by constant learning and improvement I have not seen anyone being pushed out. Well, not at least for lack of edge. High salaries for older employees could be a reason, a large financial data company I love and know, for example, expects its middle managers to move positions every 3-5 years, and the expectation is a move up. Age is not relevant as long as the person stays competitive and excels in what they are doing. But I also hear that those who hit the pay ceiling are feeling a lot of heat to either make it onto the next very hard to reach bucket (because the air up there is very thin and few positions exist that are very competitive) or to leave the firm. Someone who earns 250k base in that company, who cannot make the move in time from regional head to global head within a reasonable amount of time is oftentimes managed out. That does not make sense to me given there is only one global head and 4-5 regional heads unless global head turn over is a lot higher than regional head turnover and unless the explicit goal of the company is to only retain one or two such regional heads.
It's a tortoise/hare sort of thing, young 'uns have the energy, old bastards have the knowledge and experience. Alot if companies make mistakes when replacing old for new. On ET it seems the majority of young 'uns struggle with trading, I hear them all the time wanting to burn energy on day trading. The old buggers on the other hand appear more composed, at peace with themselves and making a quid.
But I have seen this ageism pattern alive and well even in big firms. People I know locally have been layed off in their mid 40's and 50's after having been employed for decades. And the ones still clinging to their jobs seem worried about their job security. These days its not just about the young guns coming in but there are the factors of offshoring, gig economy workers, jobs being automated away, etc...
The key is to bring something to the table in addition to being able to code. Coding is easy, in general. That's why Indians do it for basically free. Architecture nd engineering are not. Be an engineer who can code, not just a coder, if you want to stick around for awhile.
If "architecture" and "design" have value, why is most of it in the past 15 years so incredibly crappy? Not talking about system by system (shit how are we supposed to solve this again? back to kindergarden mentality again and again, let's ignore everything), but the emergent structure over time, which is the final result of architecture. If it's for job security, fine.
You'd have to be more specific. I've seen both ends of the spectrum. Wouldn't say everything is crappy now. To be honest, most of the crappy architectures I've seen were developed by old-school Fortran guys not knowing how to use c++ or modern OO paradigms. Or had something to do with web technology. Everything touching a web browser seems to be poorly architechted.