This is complete nonsense. The best and most productive engineers I know are in middle age or beyond. In addition to raw technical ability--which does not decline in my experience--they have a level-headedness about making decisions that is rare to find in younger people. It's a critical success factor, especially for complex projects.
>Young people work insane hours, they do that for cheap, they >show up on weekends and are more flexible in general.
Your assumption that income is directly related to your output is wrong. Making better, more qualified decisions is one way to differentiate yourself as you get older. Another is to quantify your output; maybe you do less programming but the pieces you do write can provide the company with a million+ lift in revenue?
Or you position yourself as writing a cleaner implementation, without having to rewrite 3 or 4 times to get it correct (ehem, those "energetic" youngins).
Company's pay for experience all of the time; and when it can be tied directly to increases in profits/revenues, you're way ahead of the game (especially ahead of any Jr. programmer that just blindly pumps out code).
This is dream which happens only when you are asleep. In real life an older person is less energetic, less enthusiastic, can't do weekends, has health issues, has responsibilities, has family commitments etc etc.
Young people work insane hours, they do that for cheap, they show up on weekends and are more flexible in general.
In most cases. Like in everyday cases experience doesn't pay well as you think. Even in professions like medicine and law that is true.
The assumption that experienced people get paid well applies for a minority few people who for nearly all practical purposes are an exception to the whole rule.