It must also be tough for younger executives who are stuck with the idea that someone 40, 50, 60 or 70 is "old", near extinction, and so on.
These are the individuals who are dinosaurs. and they are dinosaurs for being incapable of realizing that employment ages are getting extended due to longer, healthy and vital lifetimes.
This is one of the crises of our time. That is the wholesale reevaluation of what work and careers are, how long they last, the effect on traditional workplaces, and so on. These companies are discriminating out of ignorance and because there is a ground-swell of pressure from younger generations to "move out" older workers so there's room for them to move up.
Shorter work weeks and flatter organizational structures can play a role in remediating some of these issues. But 21st century "life" reality seminars are critical - more so than the dross of diversity trainings.
Be careful not to confuse technical debt with technical entropy.
Technical debt may be nothing more than a prioritization strategy that is either intentionally or unintentionally blindsided by a technical asymmetry of attention to a rate of system degradation.
Smart organizations will throttle the degree to which development performs like an ever insatiable desire to maximize efficiency at the cost of mortgaging away the responsibility for system refreshment.
Just as "fitness functions" are desirable sensors for expiring licensing and contractual renewals so should an enterprise think about and implement ecosystem fitness functions that compare existing system state against the latest industry trajectories. Identifying, recognizing, and rectifying business ecosystem weaknesses will go a long way in preventative maintenance and reduced technical entropy and debt.
Almost thirty years ago, my wife and I were in the process of adopting our two sons (now in their thirties). I had defined my career at the time as a Software engineer for hire (consultant). Technical projects, then and now, really require full attention and devotion to getting things done so I had to find a way to step out of that for a while without losing too much money or technical chops.
I found a position as a Technical Writer having Software reverse-engineering skills which was a step off of the more intense technical treadmill. Over time I found that experience complemented my original trajectory as companies are always looking for better communicators.
Given the rate of change, managing your career in consideration to your life goals is worth curating.
Executive summary: Cities must change. Sherlock.