Nice article. Sorry for the rude responses. Your intent is genuine.

I am 57 and live in silicon valley... and do the startup thing. It requires a very unusual setup for one to keep doing that... as one person put it, your kids can't eat stock options.

I have a PhD so my cohort is probably not representative, still ALL of the folks went to school are still in the biz. but most of them have graduated from a programming job.

I remember after managing $200M budgets in DoD, I came to silicon valley to code ruby on rails payment app. None of my background and skills mattered. what mattered was my ability to sling code in a language I didn't know before showing up.

This puts me on a level playing field with a 20-something that has been hacking for 5 years. At a certain point most folks are going to want to NOT be competing on that level playing field, and will want to get some benefit from their past. This usually means some form of leadership.

(and those opportunities are there!) When I hire into roles, I and others I know, definitely give a BONUS for experience. BUT if the job is super high pace (and/or a code grind), I have seen an unspoken bias towards those with family situations that will allow bad work/life balance which favor the young.