A fair point I suppose, all I can say is I've tried to keep up with the latest technology. I'm learning Flash & Dreamweaver on a Adobe acreited course at considerable expense to myself to keep up.
The simple fact is there a too many people going for too few jobs. Let's faced it when an employer has the choice of an older experienced designer & any number of fresh designers who will work for less to get on the job ladder, who do you think they will choose?
It's interesting, what started as a slightly tongue in cheek post seems to have struck a nerve!
It may have been tongue in cheek but its somehow comforting to know that I am not alone. I remember thinking to myself when I first got into a studio that there were no older designers anywhere. The odd creative director of course bit the ratio didn't seem to add up even then and I had a creeping suspicion that this is where the majority of us end up.
Anecdotal evidence when assessing an industry is meaningless, how one feels about the impact of technology or employment trends in an industry is also meaningless, what matters in the assessment are the objective data and their analysis.
As designers we tend not to come across models in economics but I have found these models to be essential in developing an informed opinion. I recommend the lessons of "The Innovator's Dilemma" (technology curves and disruptive technologies), "The Long Tail" & "The Economics of Free" (how the internet makes internet based services and products essentially free), "The Black Swan" (scaleability & known unknowns, known knowns etc) and "Predictably Irrational" (how conflating business norms and social norms destroys margin by eroding the added value of design) all books that apply to technology shift (seeing what's coming) and aid understanding of where the combination of technology innovation and the ubiquity of the internet is leading us.
After the books there are essential models: Ansoff; environmental scanning (industry data), the 3 competitive modes (monopoly, oligopoly and perfect) and Porter; generic strategies and five forces (the big ones). Apply these using the information from the books and other data such as industry statistics and the subjective opinion disappears.
About 60% of all graphic design firms are less than 5 years old that's a hell of a turnover, I remember reading the success rate of a start up is about 1/100. I've met and consulted more than 1,000 small firms, many of them design and marketing based, all but those at the very top of the pyramid are scared of how the future is destroying their margins and those at the top just let people go as they need to.
Industry summary; new entrants every year from colleges and universities + newly redundant + internet based international competition + templates + technology efficiencies + client budget cuts = imbalance between supply and demand where supply outstrips demand and the bargaining power of the buyer increases leading to ... you can figure this out yourselves.
I'm not doomsaying for the hell of it, I wish it were otherwise but it seems inevitable.
A good example from the world of software development, thanks to the internet as a service channel what took £2m+ to code and deliver in 2000 takes about £50K in 2010. I've seen it done.