The difference between finance, management consulting, and engineering is that the first two fields have status hierarchy, and the third one doesn’t. Having the right pedigree of job experience and academic background is sufficient to get a job in the vast majority of fields in existence without too many questions. Simply being at Goldman Sachs for four years is already proof that you can do investment banking.

Yet, we don’t make the same assumptions in Silicon Valley.

It's a very good point. All engineers can get hired somewhere. 

supply and demand? 

Right. There's way more demand for engineers than there is supply. 

As a recruiter, I see that.  But, for some reason, hiring managers had not changed their interviewing tactics and still want to see this perfect combination of degree, experience - and the skills demonstrated during interview. As a side effect, those policies put more mature developers at a disadvantage - despite their many years of experience, they might not have a degree from a -currently- prestigious CS program, and they are not fluent in algorithms and structures.  But yes, they still can get hired -somewhere-.  That is what I tend to recommend - do not apply to startups, go to large, more traditional,  companies.

That's good advice although it's not easy to get hired by larger more traditional companies either!