If we were dealing with hard labor maybe your point would make sense to me. The very best laborer can only do X times as much work in same amount of time as th

If we were dealing with hard labor maybe your point would make sense to me. The very best laborer can only do X times as much work in same amount of time as the least skilled laborer. When dealing with skills of the mind one person could take an entire lifetime and never accomplish what a skilled academic can achieve in an afternoon. Granted I'm not saying older folks are all better than their younger counterparts. But what I would say is that in corporate America it feels to me as though there is no differentiation made between 2 people (with same title) while one takes 10x as much time to accomplish the same amount of work. Take for example my last project. I never stayed late and always made it known that I wasn't happy when asked to. Meanwhile my younger counterparts worked happily through the night very regularly. I was never late on a deadline. Almost 100% of the younger folks were almost always late. Yet instead of being happy, that I was accomplishing my work within my regular days, my "commitment" was questioned as I wasn't happy to work all hours of the day and night to help this company complete its project. So my line in the sand is now drawn. It's a question I regularly ask when interviewing for new positions now. I'm not interested in working with people who have to work endlessly to try to meet deadlines. It's a clear "smell" that ultimately they don't really know what they're doing.