The company that writes my paycheck every two weeks doesn't care about age. I expect to work until I expire with my face planted in a keyboard. The key issue is having a good resume and the actual ability to make good on the claims in the resume. My company had me contracted out at $254/hr between June 2001 and December 2001. The customer employed my services to replace 4 Java programmers, 3 C++ programmers and a EE...concurrently. I'm on my second extension with the customer this year. The next 30 days have been arranged so that I can work from my home office in Idaho instead of 7 days at week at the customer's lab. I put in about 250 hours each month to cover all those positions on the very aggressive schedule that my customer is pushing.
I've been lining up new work for the balance of this year that I can do at the home office. I expect to transition off the crazy schedule with my current customer and work more normal hours for the balance of the year.
About the age issue: I'm 45. I've been working at this pace most of my life. I earned that BA in Molecular Biology from UCSD at age 19.
Thanks for the info and sage advice (in all your posts).
Good to hear how the world works outside the academic cloister.