Have you ever faced ageism?

I am in my late 40s and regularly interview people who are as old or older than me and occasionally they'll bring up alleged ageism from an old job or how hard it is to find a new job.

And I feel for them, but inside my head, based on the interview, I'm thinking "well, it's probably not strictly due to age, but rather that your experience has left you with strong opinions about things and as a natural response makes you less flexible to new ideas."

Based on this insight, I regularly catch myself making my own assumptions and yeah, I'm often correct, but I still want to maintain a healthy dose of self-skepticism.

Sometimes, I'm wrong. And sometimes the paradigm has shifted to a new model I am unfamiliar with.

Undoubtedly, yes. I have never been hired by anyone younger than me. Young managers, of which there are a lot now, simply don't feel comfortable hiring someone with more experience than them. I've also felt discrimination from being a lifelong bachelor. A lot of married guys are unhappy with their situation (there is scientific evidence to back that claim, search happiness and children) and they do not want to be around someone who is not in the same situation.

No.

I have found that as I get older it takes longer to find a job, but I don't think it's ageism. It's just that I have over 30 years of experience, and I want to be paid accordingly. But you see job postings for "senior software engineer", and they want 5 to 7 years of experience. If that's what you need, then I'm not your guy.

There are employers who understand why I'm worth more than the younger people, and who will pay for the experience. But there aren't as many.

Not sure it is ageism, but I hate how scrum-master (young people who has a few days of training and made arrogant by their 'master' title) take agile methods as a pretext to disregard any experience we built the hard way on the way to manage IT projects.

Ageism in the legal sense (40+)? No.

I have been overlooked or talked over in some scenarios because I am younger. I have even been told I can take a hit for the sake of office politics because my career has plenty of runway.