> Instead, I had managers old enough to be my father...
This...
> ... an attitude that wanting to move around within the company was "disloyal" to my current management.
... is bad management and bad company culture and are the reasons you get older managers who are inflexible and just riding out a paycheck. Those are the areas to fixate on and if you see it, leave. Nobody should have to work under those conditions. Working for an older manager shouldn't (and rarely is), in and of itself, be a red flag.
The old automotive company I work for released a "strongly recommended" schedule of different responsibilities that an engineer should have held for what time to be considered a strong candidate for promotion. There was a similar document I heard about for going from supervisor to manager. Combined these schedules said that no one would ever work their way up from entry level to department head. Ever. Therefore the only way to get there is outside of the official system via office politics, and not being honest about that is pretty dysfunctional on its own. That said, a symptom of that is the number of supervisors and managers who have 30+ years in...
Exactly. I was too brief with that point, but the issue is first-line managers, in some cases, having more experience than I had years of life at that point. It's an environment that seems to condemn people to life as a minor cog in a huge machine, where your opinions aren't respected and you have no hope of making it into any sort of management responsibility.