A thousand times this. Although I still write code, and I would be comfortable being a tech lead forever, after 20 years I decided to focus my career on manage

A thousand times this. Although I still write code, and I would be comfortable being a tech lead forever, after 20 years I decided to focus my career on management for my own job security. It was either that or specialize in some hot field, but that's not where my heart is. So as a generalist I would be perpetually competing with the ever widening cohort of "senior" devs who have the SV-standard 5-years experience that represents the capping out of their signalable value. The picture gets worse when you look at typical interview panels at hot SV companies: median-age 26, went to Stanford/MIT, interned at AmaGooFace, base their hiring process on established "rigorous" stack ranking of candidates based on their performance on fixed algo/whiteboard questions. While I can generally do pretty well at these, variance is high and it does nothing to differentiate me from smart but inexperienced people. I think it's ridiculous that SV treats programmers like sports players with a limited shelf life. Code bases would probably be a lot better, and workplaces more pleasant to work in if experience were more valued. However I hold no illusions about the way VCs work: they require a steady influx of impressionable young blood to exploit with visions "changing the world", so it makes sense that older jaded devs don't fit into that picture. I do think there is an arbitrage opportunity for older talent though.