Yes, and I'm not evening talking about mediocrity. I'm talking about excellent developers - people like me who've spent ten to twenty years developing high perf

Yes, and I'm not evening talking about mediocrity. I'm talking about excellent developers - people like me who've spent ten to twenty years developing high performance, high reliability apps that run in very demanding environments. These people would bring masses of skill and experience. Despite the OP's comment above this sort of hiring prioritises younger people who have time to do all the extra-curriculars, not the older developers with families and all sorts of other commitments.