You are right about the abusive subtext there, but in one point, he actually is right: Would I hire people for a bigger project, I wouldn't hire any older engineer if a younger guy could do the job and I wouldn't hire any older engineer, who lacks project experience despite the age. The older people are for mentoring the younger ones and guide in technical questions, but not overrule them by authority. And I don't need too many mentors. For a good project I would need a good mix for characters and ages. I need women and men. Especially if the project (or company) runs for decades, need to hire younger people to be the older people in my company with the experience and skills to lead this project (or company). And I expect the older people to leave the younger people space for this development. Either by looking for a challenge in their competence weight class and quitting the team or by stepping back into the second or third row.
I had seen really bad projects, where we had too many old, experienced, but expensive guys, who really did great work, but were too expensive when the initial design phase is over for the customers and then left us either left us with a gutted team, that lacked the workforce and skills to go on, or no project at all, because a competitor won the follow-up contract with young, cheap, naive people, who maybe lacked our accumulated skills, but are able to realize the design spec we had given our customer.