Fair enough. This is one reason why I tend to use the phrase "age related employment issues" instead of age discrimination or age bias. It's a mouthful, and i

Fair enough. This is one reason why I tend to use the phrase "age related employment issues" instead of age discrimination or age bias. It's a mouthful, and it certainly includes bias or discrimination, but that doesn't tell the whole story. I actually think the problems here run deep. There are many aspects of the high tech workspace that don't really appeal to a lot of people, especially as they enter middle age (but by no means limited, plenty of young people don't like it either). Ping pong tables, video game consoles, open offices. The office setup is also a factor - I read an article (NYTimes, I think) about a middle aged woman journalist whose company was purchased by a modern tech media company. She lost her private office and worked in a big open room, with back visibility, where her (often much younger) coworkers were able to track her more frequent trips to the bathroom. Funny thing for me, I was disappointed with this culture even when I was young. I majored in literature as well as math (with a cs focus), and I remember when I was younger how drawn I was to movies that kind of glamorized adulthood for me (the party scene in the movie "Manhattan" where the intellectual avant guard banter really appealed to me - I know it was a fantasy, but aren't all aspirations about what you want to grow up, to an extent?). I started working at Sun Micro after grad school, and while I didn't want to be a lawyer or in finance, I envied something about my friends who went into these fields - they were treated as adults. Their getaways were to nice restaurants, our office getaway was at Dave N Busters. It was a letdown. And I'd say that tech culture has double down on this kind of thing since I was a grad student back in the late 90s. Honestly, a lot about tech culture is really very unappealing to people who don't want to live in a permanent state of extended adolescence. I'm willing to take this a little further and say it isn't an accident - I do think that some elements of high tech are vaguely threatened by the notion that programmers and other technical types are actually adults who might prefer to go to dinner and the opera than dave n busters ad laser tag. It's more of a gut feeling, or an intuition, but I do think that this plays a much bigger role in the disinterest a lot of people have in tech - including young tech workers themselves (who, in spite of a few notorious statements, generally are not the source of age discrimination). A lot of people, to quote someone fairly insightful on this issue, actually value propriety, protocol, and privacy, and will look elsewhere for a career if those things are in short supply in high tech. On a brighter note I always felt joelonsoftware addressed this in a very positive way.