[dvirsky]

This also creates a bias against older engineers. People assume that since they meet a lot of "dinosaurs" (in terms of technology) out there, 40+ engineers will probably be dinosaurs as well.

Also, there's some unspoken assumption, that if you're 40 or even 50 and "still" an engineer, something is wrong with you - you should have been a CTO or something years ago, so you either have bad personal skills or are untalented, kept for some Job-Security-Tech you know.

The sad thing BTW is that this attitude is a self fulfilling prophecy, causing talented engineers to push up the ladder and become bad managers, or go into marketing/sales/etc. Even if they're not bad at it, we are losing great engineers due to that, who were just scared to remain engineers.

BTW to me personally tech is a second career, although I've been programming since I was a child, my first career was in journalism, and later web content and product management. I've only started working professionally as an engineer at 29.