Your best bet if you’re younger than 40 is to get rid of all your debt and have a viable exit strategy from the workforce.
If you’re younger and reading this just remember your replacement will be along shortly.
Age discrimination is real and unstoppable and coming for your job.
Hell yes it is! Throughout all of my life I've tended to look much younger than my age, and was actually somewhat treated disrespectfully. Often, i was treated like the bottom rung of interns even though i had years of experience in the workplace. I've heard people secretly refer to me as the "young punk kid", and get passed up for promotions, opportunities, etc. My youthful appearance has persisted even now as a 45-year old...But i was always brought up to respect EVERYONE no matter what, including my elders. But most recently the team that I work on (at my dayjob), they're all younger than me - all mid-to-late 30s (and one of them is 40). I guess i was never "the only old guy" on the team until recently. My boss in fact is 5 years younger than me. All was going ok with the team until it came out casually that I'm the oldest on the team - yikes even "older than the team's boss"! Well, after that, things changed. They're subtle things, but really messed up things; things that have lost me numerous opportunities within my current employer. So, in my youth i got discriminated because of assumptions that i could not possibly have the experience that i have had. And, now its discrimination on the other end - at least once my age is discovered. There's very little that i can do about this, that is, if i wish to remain at my role within the team (and I really like the job/role, but not this team because of their behavior here). So, my options are to leave to another team in this same company, or jump to another employer...either way, it sucks big time...So, age discrimination, yeah its real, raw, and awful. My heart goes out to all those affected - young and older.