Curious what sort of level you are, if your company does that?
I have wondered whether the ageism thing is partially related to younger people being a lottery ticket in terms of talent+commitment level. The company might get lucky and hire someone who is way overpowered but currently under leveled because they have not yet had time to reach their terminal seniority level. This ends up being a great bargain for the company. Whereas with established people it’s a bit more you get what you pay for.
I think a bigger “legitimate” factor is craft culture.
Because of the industry’s recent rapid growth wave, the approach experienced older developers take to the craft is often very different than what’s trendy among younger developers and teams where they dominate, and there’s easily a clash where both think the others’ approach is totally bonkers and a red flag.
Somebody seeking a job may know or believe they can adapt, but the hiring team just sees an outsider and assumes the outsider doesn’t know how to do things “right”.
This applies to skilled young developers trying to break into “old school” teams in defense/enterprise/industrial/etc as much as to older developers trying to keep up with youth-dominated FAANG and imitators, but it’s tolerated in the former but can get labelled as ageism in the latter.
Where are you based and what industry? I have a feeling that this "all of the tech industry is ageist" thing is highly dependent on location and industry.
I work in the UK in the silicon industry and there are a ton of old people.
I have wondered whether the ageism thing is partially related to younger people being a lottery ticket in terms of talent+commitment level. The company might get lucky and hire someone who is way overpowered but currently under leveled because they have not yet had time to reach their terminal seniority level. This ends up being a great bargain for the company. Whereas with established people it’s a bit more you get what you pay for.