Yes and no. Larger companies don't like hiring older employees because they can get more bang for their buck by hiring young(er) people who are willing to stick with the company for life. Being an older programmer who has been at the same company for 30+ years isn't proof that the company doesn't engage in ageism. It also means they're unaware of the current state of the hiring market and how brutal it's become over the past 10 years.
That being said, I have no idea how that problem should be addressed.
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.
The simple fact that you oppose "30 years olds" to "young" is telling enough...
30 years old are supposed to be in the first quarter of their career, and yet you already place them in the 'old' side. We can only imagine what the representation of 40 years old, let alone 50 or 60 years old, is in this industry. Something than range from decrepit to senile, I suppose.
If we extrapolated that classroom analogy to the workplace I’d think it would be more akin to a mid to late 20s with mid-40s to early 50s. I think that 30ish year olds kind of fall in between depending on experience and aptitude.
My personal experience as a 35 year old is that my life has changed A LOT from 30-35 (no kids, Seattle to 3 kids, Portland suburbs) but my skill level has grown in harder to define ways.
At 26 I was an engineering lead and coaching a 23, 35, and 41 year old. At 30 I was managing a fairly large team that ranged from 20 to 67. All of my employees today are older than me.
I think it’s dumb to assume someone’s skill just based on their age, but I truly believe someone who’s had more years of experience and is good at their craft is going to bring years of experience that you just plain ol’ cannot get without time and repetition.
I think ageism is a real thing in our industry, I’ve seen my dad go through something that sure seemed like it, but I also think there are a ton of companies out there that are usually not worried so much about age, but are looking for cheaper salaries or people willing to kill themselves for ‘the opportunity’.