>>If you don’t like that, you can still resist and ask for “Senior” level responsibility but people will slowly lose respect for you as you get older. That’s how humans work: we want the older people to lead us with their experience.

Is that really true? I debated this quite a bit in choosing to go back to being an IC. I get the expectation of mentorship with seniority (and maybe life experience/age) but I don't see how that necessitates being a people manager versus a technical lead to do so. I think that I so often provide that in my IC role is why I'm an attractive candidate to be pushed into management though.