Can someone tell me where the older software engineers in the Bay Area have gone? I recently moved into the software industry (after years in the telecom industry), and the lack of older software engineers is disconcerting in a Soylent Green type of way.
I guess some have moved into management, and others have made enough money to retire, or they've moved somewhere with better value than the Bay Area. They're likely to avoid companies where everyone's in their twenties and the offices looks like frat houses. But even so, I'd expect to see many more gray-haired engineers around here than I do.
Many of them are still there. It's important to highlight the fact that CS graduation rates have been increasing in popularity overall, so the age distribution is going to skew younger even absent any discrimination. There's oscillations but the overall trend is upward [1]. I've met plenty of developers in their 40s and a few in their 50s at "hip" companies in San Francisco.
Another factor is that high compensation means people can afford to retire earlier. I know a couple people that saved up a couple million, and then moved to "flyover" states with low CoL to live off passive income. It's often achievable by 40s or 50s depending on how much money is spent on kids. Especially if you have one or zero children it's within reach.
I'm 44 and worked at various bay area startups you never heard of from 1998 to 2005, at which time I moved out of that area.
I don't have precise numbers, but based on a cursory scan of my linked-in connections, some of my cohort has followed that path and moved out. Another big subgroup is the people who went to google or some other Big N. In particular a lot of the high performance people did this.
Another person who replied to you suggested that CS/programming is just a lot more popular now and I think that is big part of the reason why it skews young. When I graduated (in 1997), CS was not a popular study. As a consequence, startups back then had a wide age range (20-60+), but still were quite youthful overall.
Someone who is over 40 today would have gotten their start in the late 90's around the time of the first Internet boom. The number of software engineering positions since then has exploded. Based on numbers on the Bureau of Labor and Statistics website it seems like they are roughly doubling each decade. The main source of new engineers is new graduates. That, coupled with the fact that people move into management, and leave the field, retire early is going to skew the workforce to the younger side regardless of any age discrimination.
I guess some have moved into management, and others have made enough money to retire, or they've moved somewhere with better value than the Bay Area. They're likely to avoid companies where everyone's in their twenties and the offices looks like frat houses. But even so, I'd expect to see many more gray-haired engineers around here than I do.