> After 10 years, the previous experience becomes irrelevant and "drops off". The languages you learned? Gone. The APIs and weird hardware limitations? Irreleva

> After 10 years, the previous experience becomes irrelevant and "drops off". The languages you learned? Gone. The APIs and weird hardware limitations? Irrelevant. Nothing beyond 10 years matters. The experience you're really paying for with an older developer goes way beyond that. It's having a "deep" memory of a number of projects that have failed. It's having a true understanding of the value of quality and reliability. And being able to set the right level for each situation. It's about taking the time to get the requirements right, rather than just implementing what it sounds like the customer wants, only to find out months in that they don't even know. It's about showing up to the job every day. It's about knowing better than to just jump to the next job after a few months. If you want to experience youth, ask a young team how they're planning to deal with disasters, and watch the blank looks. Even for the tech aspects, it's very useful to have experienced the history to know why things are the way they are now. One of the reasons I'm so valuable now is because of what I was doing 25 years ago. As you're implicitly noting, it's hard to sell that, but that doesn't mean it's not so.