A useful cultural comparison to "coders should be turned into Soylent at 35 that's all they'll be good for" would be Bachelor Nation, which my MiL is a part of,

A useful cultural comparison to "coders should be turned into Soylent at 35 that's all they'll be good for" would be Bachelor Nation, which my MiL is a part of, where any show candidate under 25 trying to get married is considered a youthful idiot too unwise to tie their own shoes much less live with a person and become a parent. Under 25 candidates are considered worthless and taking up space for more realistic candidates over 25 preferably around 30. So its an indication of an extreme sickness in a society or culture where younger than 27 is too young and dumb to pick a spouse, then from 27 to 35 is the only economically viable life, then at 35 they're too old to be hired anymore so turn em into soylent they're good for nothing past that. Crazy that our ancestors were productive members of society from 18 to 65, and the most gaslit generation tries to hide the economic decline by claiming its "natural or self evident" that kids these days only get to live as productive adults from 27-35. I mean... pro sports players have longer careers than coastal programmers... Another hilarious analogy is the claim the building trades are horrible because 30 years of that will destroy your knees or whatever; well, the solution to that isn't a 8 year, at most, "career" writing code. Plenty of 50-something electricians making bank decades after their peers who went into programming are utterly unemployable in their field... A similar sickness can be seen in K12 school teaching where the average teacher now has only a couple years experience before getting kicked out for being too expensive and too many kids willing to work cheap. Fundamentally a culture/society that is built on the demand side to have people spend like crazy from ages 18-65, if not 0-85, is utterly doomed to collapse if that culture is only willing to pay a tiny minority of people ages 25-35. I would argue programming is not necessarily a career path any more than being a carpenter or other labor job; some people will be "up or out" in five years, but I'm not sure why someone supposedly can not program for 40 years, any more than I have no idea why a doctor can prescribe for 40 years, or a truck driver can drive for 40 years, or a bean counter can count beans for 40 years. Another cultural trend somehow not mentioned is kids need the baby sitting an open office nursery provides; if everyone older than 40 works as a contractor for more money, its not really a problem that companies only hire children as W-2 employees. I'm probably never going to be a W-2 employee again for a variety of age and race and gender discrimination reasons; I'm OK with that and enjoying making plenty of money outside the W-2 nursery.