My fear is the joke from the movie Primer:

    - "How did you get over here?"

    - "Do you know what they do with engineers when they turn forty?  They take them out and shoot them."

I've read in other threads that the ageism fear is overblown, and also that it's not overblown at all.

My plan is to develop enough of a professional network (whatever that means) that I won't be doing leetcode problems for a twenty-five-year-old interviewer when I'm fifty.