Tech firms seem to love these kinds of questions all the time. Almost every interview I've had has had them.
Personally, I find it terribly unlikely that any such filtering is intentional on any level.
- What little experience they have is effectively all relevant to the job and hence easier to justify paying for. If a neophyte can do 80% of a veteran's work for 50% of the pay, it's a tempting tradeoff. A software veteran's second decade of experience may not be worth the increased sticker price if you're asking them to perform low- and mid-level tasks.
- They are less likely to have personal entanglements (kids, family, medical).
- They are an easily appraised and substituted commodity: standard salary scales apply.
- They are less likely to know their market value and hence less likely to negotiate for increased compensation or time off.
The neophyte may be able to do 80% of the veteran's job, but that's the easily-replaceable 80%. If I'm hiring for a position that requires experience, I know that the last 20% is worth paying for. Someone is going to have to do that 20% and if it's not the new hire, then why are we hiring him?
Personal entanglements? I have never had any idea about the family status of anyone I've hired unless they were wearing a wedding ring. I don't need to know and I'm certainly not going to open the firm up to a lawsuit by asking. HR is the only one who will know, and HR does not get to veto what the software dev. interviewers say unless the candidate wants more $$ than the position offers. And even then, they'll come back to us and ask if we think he's worth it.
Compensation? Again, the interviewers don't care or know. And really does any company with half a brain care? If you're being hired, it's because we expect that you will make the company orders of magnitude more than we pay you. In that light, trying to push for the maximum salary in the pay band is really not a big deal. It's in the budget after all.
Sadly, not everyone shares your view. Many seem to forget about that last 20% and just focus on the 50% savings. I've seen it happen to more than one senior dev...
I'm far from an expert, but I have had to take classes in Employment Law and interviewing practices. This is not the kind of thing they would forget to mention!
This coincidentally depresses the marketability (for a certain class of job) of older workers and demographics less likely to achieve a degree from a top N computer science program.
Certainly you could read between the lines and say that observably favoring e.g. Stanford 2012 CS majors effectively disadvantages some protected minorities (age, gender, race). By placing the emphasis on a particular credential rather than on demographics a hiring company gets a level of plausible deniability from such claims.
Disclaimer: I have an MSci in CS and I'm only 30, so I'm not too worried about the things implied above. Yet.
If those older workers and others are equally or more skilled than the younger ones implied by your question, smart companies will realize the discrepancy and hire them.
In addition, if older workers know that firms place a "high value on undergraduate-level CS theory," they should probably spend some time learning. . . undergraduate-level CS theory.
You can in fact see this in action in other areas—for example: http://www.economist.com/node/17311877 .
The invisible hand of self-interest only works if smarter contenders actually appear in the marketplace. If there is some invisible hand of stupidity (and groupthink) that affects all companies above a certain size, then we are hosed.
Why is it that all big organizations are almost universally dilbertesque? There must be some anti-nootropic effect that occurs above a certain threshold of organizational complexity.
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...