How did this even come to be?
They first tried outsourcing to the other side of the world, but found too many timezones grinds productivity to a halt and so plan B, younger and cheaper became an explicit goal.
Not just a tech thing either, focus on appearance is bordering on the extreme nowadays. Watched the "Willy Wonka…" movie from the early 70's with my daughter last night and was struck that most of the newscasters were silver haired and in their 60s, reminding me of Jerry Dunphy. Several of the stars had messy hair that needed combing, not necessarily in character.
Many things were higher quality back when they let experienced folks work, and "allowed ugly people to make music," as it were.
The brilliant thing was getting so many to buy into libertarian propaganda and actively fight against things like unionization or labor laws which would reduce the power imbalance.
However, I feel the older software engineers shouldn't be writing as much as the younger guy but should be utilized for architecture purposes, handling requirements with clients or internal product people, and even mentoring while having some programming tasks. I think that is where they really earn their significant compensation and bring much more value to the company.