I don't know enough VCs to know if VCs themselves are discriminatory, but I've definitely seen a lot of age discrimination in VC-funded companies, and it usually starts to effect people around the mid-30s if they don't have a couple executive-level roles under their belt.
It's not explicit ageism so much as brutal and unrealistic age-grading that doesn't allow for career mistakes. If you're 40 and an executive, no one looks askance at you, but if you're 40 and still a full-time programmer, you're judged to be a loser unless you can prove that you're a top-1% engineer (which is miserable because most of the people you have to prove yourself to are not even top 20 percenters.)
My shortest job ever (3.5 months) was a company where I was brought into a management role and my responsibility was to generate paper that would be used to get rid of some "old" (late 20s to 40s) engineers. I was to be the 28-year-old douche who fired the old-timers, because the 25-year-old douche they hired 3 months earlier (now a full-blown manager, last I heard) to do it didn't want to get his name dirty.
Being asked to perjure myself and disparage people whose work I knew nothing about (but whom I liked personally) ended that job quickly.
It's not explicit ageism so much as brutal and unrealistic age-grading that doesn't allow for career mistakes. If you're 40 and an executive, no one looks askance at you, but if you're 40 and still a full-time programmer, you're judged to be a loser unless you can prove that you're a top-1% engineer (which is miserable because most of the people you have to prove yourself to are not even top 20 percenters.)
My shortest job ever (3.5 months) was a company where I was brought into a management role and my responsibility was to generate paper that would be used to get rid of some "old" (late 20s to 40s) engineers. I was to be the 28-year-old douche who fired the old-timers, because the 25-year-old douche they hired 3 months earlier (now a full-blown manager, last I heard) to do it didn't want to get his name dirty.
Being asked to perjure myself and disparage people whose work I knew nothing about (but whom I liked personally) ended that job quickly.