When founding FitAnalytics.com, we were three young students fresh from university, but all of us highly appreciated more senior programmers (40+) joining the team. Even if their language didn't fit our stack (C++ for a JS position), my experience was extremely positive, feeling that some programmers just get better with age, no matter the language du jour.
Regarding pay, I feel that it's actually rising with age. I'm now myself heading towards the mid-30s and I'm not concerned at all. Some of my older programmer friends make more money than me and have more fun as well.
I think this young programmers cult is more US centric problem. Or should I say SV centric problem. I didn't notice such widespread age discrimination in Europe. I'm not that old yet (30), but I've worked with many older programmer/engineers (40+) in several companies and most of them were highly respected, well-paid and got tons of other job offers. Sure, if you are stuck in eighties programming with Assembler only and dismiss C as high level language, don't blame anybody but yourself..
Yeah, I am not having any trouble with it outside of SV. Employers see 17 years of experience and trip over themselves to hire me (and my peers, some of whom are older).
The just-out-of-college kids can build you a website, sure, but they don't get the fun (or well paying) jobs.
It seems to me Berlin's startup ecosystem is heavily optimized for very young people. It's awesome the immigration process is so easy, but the minimum wage requirement for IT jobs is just 38,688 EUR. Lots of companies sponsoring visas, but with wages rarely above 50k EUR, even with a relatively low cost of living, they're only attracting young singles willing to sacrifice in order to get a blue card. And from the job pages videos I've seen (like Zalando), they explicitly state they're looking for young talent, and of course the ping-pong table propaganda (love that term!) is pretty standard.
Zalando is a bad example. First of all, it's not a startup, and certainly not part of any startup scene. Secondly, it's not exactly the best place to work at, same goes with any Rocket Internet company for that matter.
I do agree that a lot of young startups are more friendly to young people. But the tech scene in general is okay. I don't think it's difficult to find work as a senior here. I get 90k+ offers on a regular basis for attractive positions and interesting technologies to work on.
When founding FitAnalytics.com, we were three young students fresh from university, but all of us highly appreciated more senior programmers (40+) joining the team. Even if their language didn't fit our stack (C++ for a JS position), my experience was extremely positive, feeling that some programmers just get better with age, no matter the language du jour.
Regarding pay, I feel that it's actually rising with age. I'm now myself heading towards the mid-30s and I'm not concerned at all. Some of my older programmer friends make more money than me and have more fun as well.