Not sure if it's because of the startup culture or simply because there are actually no older candidates.
In my case, 36yo, in a startup, I'm the oldest in it. But I've been interviewing many people and I think we only got 1 candidate which was older than me (we didn't hire because it was not a good fit, with so much experience but without much experience in our tech stack, we thought it would mean paying a fair amount for someone to be basically learning from us, as we were looking for coders, not architects/principals/leads).
It's kind of ironic hearing you claim that there are no older candidates, then in the next paragraph you confirm having rejected candidates due to not knowing the particular tech stack your team uses.
Even if there were legitimate reasons for not hiring that person (sounds like he/she was not a good fit fortheposition), the way you frame it sounds like you do not understand/appreciate what a senior engineer brings to the table. You don't pay seasoned professionals to come and learn the latest fad (though for them, it will look like a perk), you pay them to double check your ideas and spot potential problems they have seen before.
If you are offering a junior position with junior-level salary, and the senior candidate is OK with that, what's not to like? There are of course risks about the new hire jumping ship when something better comes, and you may structure their pay to discourage early attrittion. But if you blame the senior guy for not being junior enough, that's exactly the ageist attitude we are discussing here.
> candidates due to not knowing the particular tech stack your team uses.
candidate, in singular: it was only one.
> you do not understand/appreciate what a senior engineer brings to the table. You don't pay seasoned professionals to come and learn the latest fad
I completely agree, but this particular candidate had been using JavaScript for the past year and when we asked him why did he switch to JavaScript from the other tech stack he was using before, he answered something along the lines of "well, it's the latest fad".
So believe when I tell you, we rejected him exactly because of the opposite reasons you state.
In my case, 36yo, in a startup, I'm the oldest in it. But I've been interviewing many people and I think we only got 1 candidate which was older than me (we didn't hire because it was not a good fit, with so much experience but without much experience in our tech stack, we thought it would mean paying a fair amount for someone to be basically learning from us, as we were looking for coders, not architects/principals/leads).