You've spoken truth there. My new boss, who just turned 40, has said openly (5 times and counting) that he wants "young smart guys" to fill our 30 openings. I turned 54 this year and have been put so far out to pasture I can't see the barn. A couple of the more irritated guys in the department are talking to lawyers. I won't do that because the pay is good even if I'm not invited to work on prime projects these days.
>>but they do not want to hire older workers
You've spoken truth there. My new boss, who just turned 40, has said openly (5 times and counting) that he wants "young smart guys" to fill our 30 openings. I turned 54 this year and have been put so far out to pasture I can't see the barn. A couple of the more irritated guys in the department are talking to lawyers. I won't do that because the pay is good even if I'm not invited to work on prime projects these days.<<
I am retired now, but I, my wife, and kids had a rough time for a while. I had 18 years experience in kernel drivers, file systems, networks protocols, debugging, etc. I remember some very bizarre phone interviews. In one, the interviewer asked for an example of my work, and I told him how I had converted a network protocol driver, which was directly related to the position in question, from Intel assembler to C. I found out after the interview that he said something like he didn't believe I was a programmer.
Strangely, I finally got a job at Apple Computer in California. Needless to say, I was one of the few "right-wingers" there, but they treated me OK. Apple does hire some foreign workers, but the great majority are from here, and I did not see any age discrimination there.
I wish you good luck, and pray that Bill Gates and his kind will learn that older US citizens can do good work, and are not necessarily so expensive.
There is a window of "talent arbitrage", usually ages 22-28, where a company can get more out of an employee in hours and skill-to-work ratio than they have to pay that employee. H1B expands that arbitrage even further, and allows it to last longer. I think the concept is overrated, but many MBA-type managers are fixated on realizing that advantage. The pressure on public companies to "make the numbers" is immense in these times - most of them aren't places one really wants to be looking for work at any age.
It should be much easier than it is for IT workers to sell their services as independent consultants. Blame laws passed by unions (who are afraid their members are going to get reclassified as as independent contractors and denied benefits) and the IT consulting industry, who managed to get a section inserted in the tax code which virtually prohibits IT people (but no one else) from working on a 1099 basis.