The article seems to imply that companies need to find a way for older programmers to continue advancing up the ladder as ICs. It is not clear that this is just

The article seems to imply that companies need to find a way for older programmers to continue advancing up the ladder as ICs. It is not clear that this is justified. What if there are diminishing (or even flat) returns on raw experience as an IC beyond, say, 10 years?