At age 60, I was "let go" from a tiny edtech startup for budget reasons. It took me 14 months and many dozens of applications and dozens of interviews to get a tech-adjacent (UX design) FT job. Ironically, I found the job in LinkedIn, not via networking. However, among my references was the founder of the startup, who had worked for the same company before starting his own.

In the interim, I had a few temp jobs via placement firms, and collected unemployment during the non-working weeks, which ran out the week of Christmas 2018. Merry Christmas!

I remember interviewing at one place, where the guy I'd be working under was maybe 35. By this point, I'd been working as a UX designer for about 6 years, the previous 3 in an Agile development environment.

I was told in a follow up that "I just didn't have enough experience" in Agile teams. Then, thanks to LinkedIn, I find out they hired someone just out of college, who presumably had ZERO experience in Agile teams, but was cheaper and younger. Much younger.

I could tell other stories about ageism in hiring, but I won't bore everyone else. I am grateful that I was able to end my FT work life in a company that was committed to a diverse workforce (age, race, gender—3 product managers who were women of color! Multiple female developers.). As much as I enjoyed that job, I had just reached my own salary-worker expiration date. ;-)