> Old people are just cruising to retirement,

That is just BS. In my company we have quite a few 50+ and it's nice to work with them. They add exactly what younger people can't.

Reality is: They need to squeeze every dollar as much as they can. If they could, they would never hire:

1. People with kids

2. Older than 33-35 (more often than not also 1)

3. Disabled

4. Often sick People (give me your history of sick leave, that kind of stuff)

5. Anything else I am missing?

Just freaking replaceable robots.

>but it's OK to establish your entire business infrastructure on the idea that your young, energetic, engineers will not remain at the company for more than 18 months.

Yeah, it's a tough nut.

It's understandable that SV companies want ambitious strivers that move on every 2 years, for the same reason many of these CEOs consider the "job done" as soon as they get "an exit". The life of the company is measured in months.

But if you're building a company for the long term, you need smart, loyal people who build institutional knowlededge within the company. This isn't something you can fast track, I don't care if you're the brightest MIT AI grad.

You need both.

That's why I like the "make it illegal to even ask"-type of policy. At some of these American firms they asked me things like my sexual orientation and religion, aspects you often can't infer from appearance, and that always seemed rather odd to me – I'll just have to trust it won't be used to discriminate. If I don't tell this information I know they can't.

Things like age, gender, and ethnic group are harder because you can't always conceal that. Still, "don't ask, don't tell" during the hiring process seems like the best option here.

You’re right not to compromise and even if you were less ethical, that’s something which is easily detected and could lead to being fired with no recourse. It’s very reasonable for a company to say someone who lies about simple facts can’t be trusted with anything else.

You certainly don't have to lie, but there's no reason you can't simply calculate your age differently. The common 365 days to a year for age isn't a universal given.