I sometimes think, that the reason for this age discrimination was the switch from female to male coders in the early 80s. It was that sudden break, that introd

I sometimes think, that the reason for this age discrimination was the switch from female to male coders in the early 80s. It was that sudden break, that introduced the computer kid as a replacement of the former cheap female workforce, and made the highly payed former system architect obsolete, as nobody had a use for a programmer anymore, who needs a secretary for typing, in the modern time of personal computers. Some of them moved to management, just renaming their job position. So the gender discrimination of cheap female coder vs expensive male system architect switched into an age discrimination between cheap young coders, and expensive managers. We lost both the skilled and the female coders in this way.