As an “older guy” who was one of those Silicon Valley engineer-manager-executives and took “way out #1” — became entrepreneurial and therefore stayed gainfully employed — let me point out one other thing about aging engineers.
Far too many of them stopped learning, growing, being excited about new technology. Instead, they depend solely on their vast “experience” — and they tend to approach every problem in the same old way, with the same old solutions. They pattern-match each task with what they have done in the past, rather than examining every problem as a new one and selecting the **best** (new or old) technology to solve it.
In other words, they are big, heavy hammers and to them every problem looks like the nails they “used” to pound in with it. So pound they do, oblivious to the fact that THIS newfangled nail has SCREW THREADS on it and a phillips drive slot on top. :-)
This is not only an issue with engineers — it affects professionals of every stripe, from doctors to CPAs to lawyers.
>>>they tend to approach every problem in the same old way, with the same old solutions.
I agree. It works in the software area in spades. There, some comment that a programmer can only tolerate 3 language changes before he/she refuses to change again.
The flip-side being that this approach, applied every time, increases cost and takes a lot more time.
Sometimes it's faster and cheaper and just as effective to lean on experience to get something done.
I'm not against looking for new ways of doing things -- but to go for new just because it's new is not always the right thing to do.