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I think I must be one of the younger people on this site because while I agree ageism is a bad thing in the sense that age should simply not be a factor when it

I think I must be one of the younger people on this site because while I agree ageism is a bad thing in the sense that age should simply not be a factor when it comes to hiring/pay, and that experience is good, I also have direct experience working with older developers who didn’t know the new tools we were trying to use (in my case, AI and big data) very well and so weren’t any more productive / were less productive than younger people who were more experienced within that subject area. That being said, by far the best engineers I’ve met were the people who usually pioneered these systems 20 years ago and were now domain experts. But what I mean by this post is that I also have met a bunch of people who basically only know basic crud, and just because they had a lot of experience in that area didn’t mean that transferred very well to other areas. There’s a limit to how much your knowledge of SQL and Windows server from a decade ago will help you with Kafka and Cassandra

zrobotics 8y ago
But that has nothing to do with age, and everything to do with poor skills-fit. Because someone fresh out of a CS program won't be all that much better. You admitted that there are cases where experience helps, but some team members don't have that experience. Isolate for variables, don't compare apples to oranges. You are comparing older engineers without relevant experience to "younger people who were more experienced within that subject area." What about younger engineers who aren't experienced? I suspect their performance will be equally poor, if not worse.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
The value of older, more experienced workers is the wisdom they've accrued over the years. There's a reason they don't jump into every new fad that comes along and stick with tools that they know work.
romeisendcoming 8y ago
There is a limit on where kafka and cassandra are best solutions for your domain. Anyone who only knows SQL and windows server shouldn't be working on new technology stacks.

zrobotics 8y ago

But that has nothing to do with age, and everything to do with poor skills-fit. Because someone fresh out of a CS program won't be all that much better. You admitted that there are cases where experience helps, but some team members don't have that experience. Isolate for variables, don't compare apples to oranges. You are comparing older engineers without relevant experience to "younger people who were more experienced within that subject area." What about younger engineers who aren't experienced? I suspect their performance will be equally poor, if not worse.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

The value of older, more experienced workers is the wisdom they've accrued over the years. There's a reason they don't jump into every new fad that comes along and stick with tools that they know work.

romeisendcoming 8y ago

There is a limit on where kafka and cassandra are best solutions for your domain. Anyone who only knows SQL and windows server shouldn't be working on new technology stacks.