Is age an issue?
nailer: I'm 28. I've been working fulltime for 11 years now and make great money in the environments you describe.I would kill to be starting out now: not for the sake of youth, but for:* top-tier CS courses using dynamically typed langiages.* English-like languages being considered a 'grown up' solution* Microsoft not being seen as the solution to everything* The end of the packaging dependency hell that a lot of 
Linux distros had* Element trees for XML* Not having to repeat the logic in my database and app,and more.You might not get the jobs you're applying for, but consider: do you really want to work at these places? Thousands of people in their early 20s are working at newer, large-but-rainmaker places like Google and Facebook, or starting their own great efforts, taking advantage of today's technology not yesterday's.