> The "good" devs become managers or magically disappear. Magically as in they get banished to some other realm I've never been able to see.
I agree with you here - the question is why? I don't think it's because we're discriminated against for being old, I think it's because in 99% of cases (we can't all be donald knuth), our cost grows faster than our skills. So we either move to management/business (where experience matters more and it's much harder to quantify productivity), or we become "the overpaid one".
> If it was as simple as "they ask for too much", then someone would snap them out of it and we'd see plenty of older devs at software companies
But they wouldn't snap out of it. (a) in most countries you can't demote people, (b) it's very hard psychologically to accept being paid less for the same job
> more older engineers to show the younger ones how dumb they are.
I'm talking about 45+ vs 30 years olds here, not 30 vs 23.
I think the dominant effect is because the whole field is rapidly growing, so newly trained and younger is a disproportionately high amount relative to if it was at a steady state.
I agree with you here - the question is why? I don't think it's because we're discriminated against for being old, I think it's because in 99% of cases (we can't all be donald knuth), our cost grows faster than our skills. So we either move to management/business (where experience matters more and it's much harder to quantify productivity), or we become "the overpaid one".
> If it was as simple as "they ask for too much", then someone would snap them out of it and we'd see plenty of older devs at software companies
But they wouldn't snap out of it. (a) in most countries you can't demote people, (b) it's very hard psychologically to accept being paid less for the same job
> more older engineers to show the younger ones how dumb they are.
I'm talking about 45+ vs 30 years olds here, not 30 vs 23.