That's an interesting conspiracy theory I haven't heard before. However, I doubt the investment into rewriting large projects makes any financial sense even if

That's an interesting conspiracy theory I haven't heard before. However, I doubt the investment into rewriting large projects makes any financial sense even if the goal is to kick out the experts. Rewrites take years, even if the junior does it for cheaper, and migrations are an existential business risk. If those 15 years of C++ optimization don't provide an advantage over what a 22 year old with half a year of bootcamp can provide for a quarter of the price, then maybe it really is time to stop doing things in C++. The unfortunate truth of programming as a profession is that you need to move with the times. If C++ is on its way out (which I highly doubt), it's time to learn Rust. Most Visual Basic programmers moved on, as did most Fortran programmers, and many C++ programmers when Java hit the scene. When you're making this about labour's bargaining power, you're assuming that young labour is a threat to experience labour. Perhaps that's the case to some extent, as the shortage of people with programming skills that has led to the ridiculously high wages for the software industry is slowly evaporating, but gatekeeping the industry isn't some kind of pro-labour move, it's just selfish.