I work for the biggest telecom company in San Diego in IT and am in early thirties.
We are always looking for good people in IT and when I say good people, we mean:
1) Excellent technical skills
2) Good Communication/interpersonal skills
3) Attitude and aptitude to learn things fast and being curious.
4) Good Project management capabilities
Needless to say, it is very very difficult to find good people in IT. Even today, we have couple of openings though we have a blanket hiring freeze.
We have even outsourced a major portion of our development work to India. Now problems with outsourcing:
1) Major time difference
2) Same as above: Difficult to find good people.
Personally, I feel IT demands a lot on a person as technology is changing very rapidly. One always has to keep oneself uptodate. But this is the case with any knowledge based profession ( Medical/Engineering/Accounting ).
Most of the knowledge based profession can be easily outsourced to other countries which does not need tangible interaction with a person located here. For example:
1) Lots of IT jobs
2) Few Medical Jobs: Example: Radiologists
3) Tax/Accounting jobs
Few of the reasons, my company is expanding big time in India:
1) Large number of people with good skillset
2) H1B Visa problems in USA
3)Somewhat cheaper to outsource in India
In essence, with the general economy being bad, all kinds of job markets are affected and IT is no exception to this. But good people in any field in general are always difficult to find and thus no job issue for them.
Age Bias: I feel it definitely exists though one can reduce this bias with excellent technical skills
