Being in a series of small startups for most of my career I haven't done a lot of hiring, but I've …

The invisible hand of the market is way to "ineffective" and random for these "if so, why don't just ...".

From what I have seen, many workplaces these days, seem to be attempts to recreate the college experience (I went to a very rigid tech school, that did its best to recreate a work environment, so it wasn't a big deal, for me to enter the workforce). Not sure that's the best thing to do, but a lot of folks are making a lot of money, so I guess I'm just out of touch. In Ye Olde Days, most companies were run by folks in their fifties. These people (the good ones, anyway) knew that they had to have the energy, enthusiasm, and creativity of youth, but were also quite aware of the need for structure, stability and confidence that only comes with experience. Since older folks had the money and power, younger ones were forced to work with them. Now that youth has the money and power, it seems as if they don't feel the need to have older folks around.

You've sneaked in a premise that they are not starting their own companies. As a counter-example, there are many 40+ year old people were laid off in the video games industry in recent years, who have since founded their own companies. They attract good talent, offer good working conditions (often remote), and attract funding much faster than the usual new company in this space. So in that sense, they are quite robust and formidable. Another way to say this is that they are in auspicious circumstances to build powerhouses in a blind spot.

As a GenXer, the issue is that there really isn't very many good GenXers - software was so new there just aren't many 20+ years of experience software developers, and then there were so many bad ideas floating around for so long, the subset of those developers that are actually good beyond the abilities of people with 10-15 years of experience is small. I mean, when I started, there was maybe 100k "computer programmers" in the US. Now there are millions.