[eitally]

"Brutal", "Ageism", and "Tech" in this headline are all editorializing by the author. Beyond the tech bubble there are countless more traditional companies that depend to varying levels on internally developed software and are happy to employ competent folks of any age, especially those not likely to flee after 6-24mo (per a different post yesterday about how to make money as a programmer). In one of our offices the average tenure is >20yrs, with a couple of guys beyond 40yrs with the company. A few of them participated in the original authoring of a critical business system we wrote in the early 90s (it's been completely rewritten a couple of times since, but still), and having their deep knowledge is extremely important to us. But we're not a tech company and we are happy for folks to work a standard 40hr week, with comp time to compensate for on-call or extraordinary circumstances.