The salary for any given employee is not a limiting factor. I think this is true. Even when you have a very limited budget, many places will prefer to be under head count with a higher performing team. If you can get that guy who is going to let you avoid running down rabbit holes all day, every day, they are worth the extra bucks.
I think the problem is that these people are hard to find -- whether young or old.
"I think the problem is that these people are hard to find -- whether young or old."
Find as employees, and its harder to find them as they get old. I've already found myself, my family and I have a high standard of living without having to put up with open offices, long commutes, cult like office culture, more than 80 hours a week, or less than six month runway till we're all unemployed. Maybe I could be convinced to consult? The odds of this being the situation at 42 are a bit higher than at 22 and the odds rise over time.
Life is different now, WRT culture fit, for example, a quarter century ago employers didn't care about my religion or lack thereof, or my reading matter or hobbies, but now its all about everyone trying to fake that they're the same 22 year old kid, which is really weird. I think I'm a pretty good actor and if I got accepted into a cult like environment, it would be really weird for everyone when I stopped acting, so I'm not sure hiring people based on acting skills is necessarily producing culture fit to begin with.
Strangely, I'm told that the best work teams have great interview actors and/or really are groupthinkers of the highest (lowest?) caliber, yet observation and experience show the most productive teams I've seen have been fairly diverse. Maybe they're trying to select for the best liars in interviews. (Yeah boss, just like you said, groupthink is awesome!)
I think the problem is that these people are hard to find -- whether young or old.