[world32]

I think you hit the nail on the head. Absolutely age discrimination exists but there are also other factors at play in some situations. Without specific domain knowledge or management experience there is a ceiling to how much experience helps the company.

For a software developer working on standard CRUD database-backed applications, the difference in productivity and usefulness to the company at 5-10 years is really not that different at 20 years.

This effect is also compounded by the fact that the less experienced developer now looks a lot better if he is essentially doing the exact same job that a 20 year experience developer is doing.

Note that what I'm talking about has very little to do with "keeping up with the latest frontend frameworks" or stuff like that. Software engineering in this sense is like a trade - if your sink is broken and you need it fixed, would you hire pay $15 / hour for a plumber with 5 years experience or pay $30 / hour for a plumber with 10 years experience? You know that the sink can be easily fixed by most decent plumbers so the amount of experience they have really doesn't matter beyond a certain point.

[alchemism]

If your broken sink is connected to a broken pipe under the street in front of your house on your property, and you find that you need to hire a Master Plumber with a team of juniors to fix it, you may find that the same price/years of experience equation exists.

The hierarchy of the trade union is what sustains this service model in the marketplace.

[world32]

"hire a Master Plumber with a team of juniors to fix it"

In that situation I would consider the "Master Plumber" akin to a lead developer or project manager. Which goes back to my main point - in software development you eventually need to either move to a management/leadership role or specialise in domain specific fields like security, computer graphics, systems architecture etc.

[C1sc0cat]

Wouldn't that be the responsibility of the water company which is civil engineering

[alchemism]

Every house has a connection to the water main - what happens after that connection point is not their responsibility to repair.

But they will shut it off if you don’t fix it in, say, 10 days...

[arethuza]

"You know that the sink can be easily fixed by most decent plumbers"

Find a decent plumber who isn't so busy that they will do a small job like fixing a sink - now that is the real problem.

And bad plumbers can create chaos in ways that would make lawyers jealous - we had to call the police on a plumber once....