My experience with "enterprise" development ("writing reporting software", or "CRUD replacement for Excel Spreadsheet X") is that those companies don't actually

My experience with "enterprise" development ("writing reporting software", or "CRUD replacement for Excel Spreadsheet X") is that those companies don't actually pay decent salaries, even for the mundane, trivial development work required. They might "pay the mortgage" in some one-horse town in the midwest or deep south, but in places where most people live they won't. What's more, those settings are usually filled with toxic garbage like cliques of people who've been there 5, 10, 20 years and play gossip or petty politics games, middle-managers who view their subordinates as enemies (competition) or scapegoats (when said middle-managers fail to deliver because of their own inability to lead a team), and departments who treat developers like unskilled labor or some sort of awkward add-on to the IT department. Middle- and upper-management at these places are some of the most spoiled self-entitled pricks I've ever encountered. They are also frequently the most unjustifiably arrogant, incompetent hypocrites in the organization. Sure, somebody has to do the work in those settings. More power to the people who can. That doesn't mean they're better people (or worse) than those who can't stomach that kind of work or putting up with the spoiled-brat, unjustifiably arrogant faux-authority of petty jerk managers. It takes real maturity--not the fake, arbitrary kind you suggest in (b)--to understand that. This isn't to pooh-pooh your points (a) and (c) about older workers; being an older worker (in IT terms; I'm mid-30s) I see what inexperience (which is most often associated with youth) means in terms of output, focus, and durability. But neither one fits in with your larger narrative necessarily.