It's not necessarily luck, you've built a network in an area with opportunity, either on purpose or by accident. That works for both young and old.
The problem is when you have to go in cold and pass a google-style interview just to get considered for any job, even at a greeting card company. The now ubiquitous position where "we only hire the top 1%."
With that much competition, being old puts you at a definite disadvantage. Especially when tech interviews focus on CS trivia rather than engineering design and experience, to the benefit of those fresh out of college.
Not every place is a startup of course, but the cargo-culting of interview "best practices" has spread far and wide as stodgy companies yearn to look cool.
Even after graduating from college over 20 years ago. I purposefully took a job as a computer operator in a larger city where I still live that was way below my skillset and the amount I could have made at in a smaller city closer to home as a junior Dev for the opportunity.
Over a decade later, when I really started taking my career seriously again, I made the same calculation. I had two choices, I could accept an offer that was paying more but using a technology that I didn’t see having a future or taking a job paying only little bit more but was clearly a better long term play technologically. I’m aggressive about keeping up and having a competitive resume.
I respond to every local recruiting company that reaches out to me. I keep them in the loop, I’ve met a few recruiters for lunch and I refer my favorite ones when I know someone is looking. I’ve also done hiring through recruiters.
The problem is when you have to go in cold and pass a google-style interview just to get considered for any job, even at a greeting card company. The now ubiquitous position where "we only hire the top 1%."
With that much competition, being old puts you at a definite disadvantage. Especially when tech interviews focus on CS trivia rather than engineering design and experience, benefiting those fresh out of college.
I am still hands on. But, I had to elevate myself above being seen as “just a Developer”. I’ve been asked simple technical questions to determine whether I had basic competence, but all of my interviews over the past few years have been along the lines of “draw out an architecture” or “describe how you would solve these $hairy_problems we are having. I have never been asked a leetCode type question. The closest I’ve gotten was writing a merge sort on the board - I did, got an offer but I was so turned off by the entire process that I took another job instead.
All I’ve done is kept my skills current, lived in a place where there are a lot of corporations who need developers, learned how to interview well (not leetCode interviews just general interviewing) and kept a warm network.
How much of it is ageism and how much of it people not aggressively keeping thier skill up? I’m no special snowflake. I just keep my skills current and take care of my network.
Or maybe you were just one of the lucky few.