> I can't imagine what the difference between 50 and 25 will be. I think the problem we run into is that neither can most people. > If you're hiring 40-60 yea

> I can't imagine what the difference between 50 and 25 will be. I think the problem we run into is that neither can most people. > If you're hiring 40-60 year olds you cannot simply hire a 25 year old and get an "acceptable tradeoff of competency" unless you didn't need anything close to that competency in the first place. And, again, the issue is that most people honestly believe that they don't need the extra competency. I work in a relatively enlightened group. People treat me with considerable respect and I feel that they value my experience (I'm knocking up against 50 years old). Even still, if I say, "You know what, I've tried that before a few times and it never seems to work out" nobody will accept it as an answer :-). These young guys all want/need to make their own mistakes. Sometimes I've even run into situations where people are doing considerable damage to their careers by making bad choices. Explaining the situation often makes them very, very unhappy. You end up feeling like the dad on a team of teenagers where everyone deep down loves and respects you, but day to day hates your guts :-). Since the field is growing so fast, we have this influx of young talent. They just can't see beyond where they will be in 5 years. Just the other day I saw an ad on Youtube for some programmer mill -- "I took a 10 month course and now I'm living my dream," kind of BS. Everybody wants to think that they are doing an awesome job and we have pushed back the bar for awesome a fairly long way. There's an expectation that you can do a boot camp, work for a year or two and then it's easy street from there. The reality, of course, is that 30 years on I'm still reading and hacking and struggling and experimenting and learning -- and I've been doing it for 30 years. I look in awe at some people in the industry and wonder if I will be able to gain that kind of competency before I retire. I think if I could sum up the advantage of being more experienced it would be to watch the classic movie, "The Seven Samurai", note who survives to the end, think about why they survive and remark on what they plan to do next.