A slightly cynical explanation:

Startups need cheap workers who will work long hours. And honestly, for every one Google (who legitimately needed genius level scientists), you have 10 WhatsApps (which are glorified simple CRUD apps).

Now how are you going to get a guy (who sort of knows what he's doing) to work 15 hours a day for pizza?

You've got to trick him "Change the world", " we're the next Google ", " you get to use any stack you want"

When your a 20 year old kid, with no responsibilities and a future ahead of you, this sounds perfect. When you're 30 (and all the more so 40), you go to work to 1. Feed your family 2. If you want to "change the world", you work for a non-profit.

And all the skills don't matter. Your knowledge how to save RAM? Useless. Just spin up another VM.

So for the CEO of a startup, a 30 year old is simply too expensive for what he needs - a cheep code monkey. All the excuses are just that.

Here in Berlin I've met programmers who were hired BECAUSE they were over 40 (or 50 in one case). I think this is a very American problem. And that's why I HOPE that we stop revering the U.S. myths and trends. Europe has a much less shallow approach to the social implication of work on one's life. We should keep it in mind, and pride ourselves that we can innovate and do this whole startup thingy without parroting the broken Silicon Valley work ethic.

I wish I could upvote this more than once.

I'm a 40+ years old life-long programmer with some academic science background, and it's not possible for me to actually get a job. A few years back I thought I'd try to get a full time position, to no avail. The only work that happens for me is freelance work with clients who already know me. It's not an uncomfortable life, but there's also a very distinct ceiling I'm always aware of.

I was instrumental, and often also the de-facto project lead, in launching several multi-million websites and other software, but as a freelancer I'm not really benefitting from these successes. In most cases I can't even legally advertise it. I'm stuck at a medium income level that I feel could dry up very quickly if bad luck strikes.

The job market appears saturated with programmers, and to make matters worse for everyone involved, companies lack the tools and the will to even select applicants properly - I suspect this is partly due to the fact that programming is considered such a low-value skill. At times it feels like it's the corporate equivalent of working as a burger flipper. It's not really considered a dignified position to be in when you're 30. Yet, perversely, the world is built on software.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding - even inside tech companies and SV startups - what the nature of programming-as-a-profession is. In my opinion it should not be some menial work that should only be performed by unskilled youth looking to advance to a "real" job as soon as possible. It's a skilled trade that takes time to develop.

There will always be assholes and ageism.

However I also started programming when I was close to 30. I'm now near 50 and I'm still programming. I have to justify what I've learned. On the other hand I actually have learned. And it doesn't take too many rounds of, "Here is what I learned from X ... and so I suggest Y" working out in spades to demonstrate my value.

It is easy to work yourself into a career dead end. It is also easy to not stretch and find yourself with skills that were once great but no longer applicable. I have seen these happen to very good people.

But being unemployed because you are old is far from inevitable.

Get into a big and mature company (think: 10k+ employees) instead of a startup or an smb. When I visit my friend at his company's San Francisco r&d building I see just as many old people as young or middle aged. Many of the older folks are very well respected due to their experience. Downside is that you'll probably be using some OOP language to make incremental changes to some ancient api call.

I'm 29 and slowly being pushed into a management position. I'm about 25% code (mostly R&D) and 75% management. I feel like only just hit my peak in coding knowledge and quality. It's such a shame to take someone away from code right as they begin to produce their best stuff. It's just that I can't exactly walk away from the opportunity and money, so I have to go along with it and hope my side projects keep my sanity.

Management is such a weird thing since nobody wants to hire you for it if you've never done it. But it feels like if you've done it once, you're on that track automatically.

I'd gladly head that way. Pure software engineering is gradually becoming less interesting to me over the course of my career - the people problems are the ones I like.

However... I'm older than you and have never gotten a "you're too old" vibe from anyone. In fact, if I have a complaint it's the opposite, it's that some companies want to treat me the same as someone 10 years younger - i.e. they don't see much difference between 2 and 10 years of experience, and you're a "Software Engineer" either way.

Come over to the ops side. We geezers still get respect here.

Where do you work? Because that's not my experience in London. Lots of experienced folk around here :).

> Yea, 32 years old programmer is just too old, 32 years old surgeon is usually too young to work alone.

Wait, how are you supposed to be a senior level developer without at least 10 years experience?

Yeah they miss out on a lot of good talent. Most programmers in my team are older than 32 and they're amazing!

"Logan's Run" is more prophetic than I thought!

I'm in my early 40s, live in a major metropolitan area and when I look for a job as a full stack c# developer, I have companies falling over themselves for me.

I am not even that strong with the latest whiz bang JavaScript framework of the week but I can architect anything with my chosen stack and I know what I know on a very deep level.

My all time favorite take on this silly "issue":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3367465

Don't put your age on your CV. It's irrelevant.

Don't be afraid - lots of serious companies hire older coders.

Those roles carry various titles - Principals, Architects, etc., but basically it is the non-management track.

In my team it's architects, senior programmers in both age and skill. Use them for code reviews, query tuning, investigating infrastructure/code improvements, etc.

Invaluable help, true multipliers.

Thats crazy rude actually.