Wow, sounds just about like classes we had in the US until the 1930s when we adopted the Prussian designed "Industrial Education system" which made people smart enough to calculate artillery range but too damn stupid to question orders doesn't it? Oh, you may not know this part of history since it's buried in piles of bureaucratic shit to hide it.. but it's there!

It certainly could turn into a cheap labor scenario, and I am no fan of the H1-B, having worked with many in my time, but businesses that do not have a good pool of candidates are in big trouble, because you need talent as well as skill on your coding bench to make money and get ahead unless you're already a giant, and even then it hurts when your coders suck. Many H1-Bs are sweatshop hacks. However, there are some who are very talented and I am happy when they manage to upgrade to green card or even naturalize.

You are disposable. There will always be another one just like you that they can hire. They can get a dozen resumes with a single call.

That's if they don't just get someone on a H1B visa.

I am running my own business these days. but several years ago (2008-2012) I was working for an Israeli start up and was enjoying myself. They appreciated the life-long experience gained during dozens if not hundreds of software projects big and small.

So, I would say consider setting up your own company and doing independent consulting. That way you can just help companies out when they need it and continue to stay on the technical side of things. Depending on what your skills are, your rate as an independent consultant will probably exceed what you would make going into management anyway.

I've been doing nothing but contracts for almost 4 years now and almost every week a recruiter or someone is asking me if I'm available for a contract. I haven't noticed any age discrimination yet. I've seen guys in their 70's still working contracts along with me and doing fine.

Are you an in-house programmer now? Move to a company that services clients.

Or if you currently provide services to clients, move the other direction.

Any reasonable person would be suspicious that age discrimination does not exist.

True, a young engineer will never get rejected for knowing only COBOL - but there's no excuse for a graying one to have that problem either. If anything, good older engineers should be *more* up-to-date because they can learn new technologies faster (having learned so many before), and are more abreast of useful trends (because their experience lets them discern fads from real evolution).

There are a lot of public employees in Detroit, Michigan who believed that too. Hell, it was in their State Consitution that their pension promises must be 'honest'.