The fact that you’ve been there for that long suggests that you’re working for an ‘older’ (both as in the age of the company AND the average age of employees) company to begin with, which would likely NOT have that kind of culture.
As someone who’s worked for older companies and younger ones, I feel like it’s all a matter of where direct technical management is placing emphasis, not some kind of deep seeded collusion between hiring managers.
Companies that want to ‘move fast’ tend to hire younger because they connotate old ~= slow. Companies that want solid, stable, well engineered solutions seem to feel like young ~= junior.
My opinion is: they're both kind of right in the aggregate. By and large the older people I’ve worked with and employed were a fair bit slower to get to initial done. But they got there in a well engineered way that had less post launch defects, was easier to maintain, and in general showed the decades of corner cases they have etched into their soul from all their battles.
By and large the younger/less experienced the more eager they were to pick up and learn the new and shiny tech. Which is awesome when we have to take on a new piece of tech for whatever reason. I typically find them voracious when pointed at a problem that interests them, and they usually hammer out something a noticeable amount faster than the older crowd. However, in general, the post launch defects are atrocious when compared to the more experienced crowd, I often see spaghetti architecture, and there’s much less pragmatism when it comes to decision making.
Surprise! Experienced people lean on their experience and wisdom and young people utilize their appetite for knowledge and their (comparatively) vast amount of stamina. It’s almost like there’s a few millennia of stories around this topic...
A room full of 10 year olds may learn fine on their own. Stick a 30 year old teacher in the room with them and watch their minds expand. A room full of 30 year olds can be kind of boring. Stick some young’ins in there with them and watch them play.
Good teams should have both. Experienced pros have a lot to teach and people that think they can’t learn anything from them are, frankly, stupid. I also strongly believe that youthful exuberance is infectious and makes it more fun for everyone to come in to work.