Perhaps then the issue is that all developers see a path to management as the only way to progress their career and in actual fact there is only a minority of developers who love their job enough to want to do it for their entire career?
I think this is true of a lot of devs... I have seen friends who who have gone into management because they didn't really love coding.. I've been doing this stuff since I was 9 and don't ever want to stop
Yep. I know a guy who, in his late '20s, decided that he wasn't going to be able to keep up as a coder in the long run, so he jumped to management. As long as I've known him, he's always been the kind of person who cares more about maximizing how much money he makes than any kind of job satisfaction.
Many, but certainly not all. The best developer I know started his career writing software for the original Macintosh in the 80's. He's still primarily a developer.
Here's the important question: how many twenty- or thirty-something startup founders hear that and think "dinosaur who writes GOTO statements" (false), versus "awesome hacker who has been constantly seeking out the newest technologies for 30+ years" (true)?
Once again I say in a start up I want experience. I want developers that can deliver with minimal management and who GTD rather than work twice as long to deliver tightly coupled, dependency riddled, fashionable code.
Also another point to your comment. If the founders are 20 or 30 something, is that why they are only hiring 20 or 30 something developers. It's their contacts in their network, previous co-workers and friends. Perhaps the issue with start ups in that not that higher percentage are started by 45-50 somethings. Hence it would be interesting to see the split of developers ages compared to the co-founders age.
Tell that to devs who worked in the dotcom boom, or the PC boom before that.