Experience can be valuable, but it's not automatically valuable. Plenty of people completely fail to learn from their long experience. Others learn very quickly

Experience can be valuable, but it's not automatically valuable. Plenty of people completely fail to learn from their long experience. Others learn very quickly from their limited experience. The paragon is talent plus experience plus willingness to learn from experience. Admittedly, more older devs than younger devs will have this combination, but "social promotion" is no guarantee of success.