[meowzero]

It's not technically ageism. You're right.

But there's an engineer in his 50's, who worked in his company for many years. He had intimate knowledge of its systems and domain. But his company got bought out, and the new owners decided they don't need that group anymore and lays off the entire group. Suddenly, his domain expertise is near-useless unless he can find another, similar position.

He interviews for other positions, but he is hit with questions he's not familiar with. He drones on about his old systems/architect like an old fogey who not up to date with the new, shiny stuff. He tries to study the new stuff, but he's tired, overwhelmed, burnt out, etc. His interviewers realizes he has a lot of experience and probably highly skilled, but his skills and experience aren't relevant enough to what their company is doing. They offer to hire him at a junior rate, or not hire him at all. Is this ageism, or is he not good enough?

[amitport]

No, that's not ageism - Also that's almost never how the story goes.

The last paragraph is more commonly:

He/she applies to a position relevant to his/her skills, and makes the mistake of listing all is previous experience in the resume - No response. After a while, he downplays his resume - gets responses. In the interview he/she answers every question with great accuracy, but something just doesn't "click" to the interviewer (the interviewer is sure he/she is filtering on skill alone, but is very wrong about that)

The fact is, recruiters and interviewers hire people they like, people that are similar to them. If you're from the same place look similar and from a similar age it generally has a lot more weight than anything skill-related.