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>"Age is just a number." Age is a proxy for wisdom. The longer you are on this earth, the more wisdom and experience you will acquire. That has value. But t

>"Age is just a number." Age is a proxy for wisdom. The longer you are on this earth, the more wisdom and experience you will acquire. That has value. But that's not to say that age alone should be a dealbreaker or barrier to success, as the author has proven. I'm 32; I look back at me at 18, 19, 20, even 25 and laugh at how little I knew. I have learned so much since then, and continue to do so. The main problem with being young is that you don't realize what you've yet to realize.

binarysolo 14y ago
Age is correlative to wisdom, and yes, wisdom has plenty of value. That being said, there are lots of exciting things to do when you know not what you realize. Especially for certain types of overachievers and perfectionists, we are significantly more hampered by what we can do excellently vs what we can simply deliver passably. Go enjoy life and collect those data points, success and failure. :)
wpietri 14y ago
> The longer you are on this earth, the more wisdom and experience you will acquire. Well, maybe. You get experience when things happen. The more you play it safe, the less happens. And you only get wisdom when you think about your experiences. There are plenty of people with wisdom well beyond their years. > The main problem with being young is that you don't realize what you've yet to realize. Bad news! It gets worse. At some point, just when you start to feel like you know what you don't know, you realize that they are making new things up faster than you can keep track. Talking to people a generation younger than me can be a humbling experience. I have to tread carefully, as you do when you're talking with a person from another country.
- flatline3 14y ago
  > There are plenty of people with wisdom well beyond their years. I still haven't met any. I've met plenty of smart kids, and I'm pretty sure I was one, 15 years ago. However, I had no idea what I was doing, and worse yet, had the hubris to think I did. I was insufferable, and I'd never hire 15-years-ago me. I also won't hire any other young engineers -- I'll let them find out how little they actually know on someone else's dime. On the other hand, if I was in the VC game, I'd absolutely leverage young engineers as grist for my mill. They're the most amenable to the risk, and it doesn't really matter if the vast majority of small investments fail (and they will, especially given the inexperienced teams), if you hit just a few home run exits. > Bad news! It gets worse. At some point, just when you start to feel like you know what you don't know, you realize that they are making new things up faster than you can keep track. Talking to people a generation younger than me can be a humbling experience. I have to tread carefully, as you do when you're talking with a person from another country. That's unnecessarily defeatist. There are steady advances, but there's very little that's genuinely new under the sun, and quite a bit of what the youngsters get excited about is just the cyclic rediscovery of what we already knew.
  - flatline 14y ago
    > I also won't hire any other young engineers Your loss, really. I've interviewed and worked with several young engineers who were really top-notch, who worked out great, and were mature in their approach to work and life in general. They also tend to come with a lower price tag. Some have not worked out so well, but I don't have any reason to believe that the failure rate changes dramatically with age. As I myself get older, I'm not so sure that the maturity level changes all that much either. People are just better at hiding their flaws as they grow older, then you find out too late when there's an issue.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - wpietri 14y ago
      Yes. Good young engineers are very amenable to learning new approaches. And I love the raw energy of somebody who is 25 and sees every project as a fresh! exciting! new! challenge!
    - flatline3 14y ago
      I've never worked with a top-notch young engineer. Brilliant, yes, top notch, no. Every single one has had misguided priorities, significant experience gaps (leading to both bad engineering decisions and misguided priorities), and -- even in the best of them -- hubris. Despite their intelligence they've always required constant senior level supervision, and have generally been the ones most likely to create maintenance-heavy components due to inexperience. I'm not sure why our experiences differ so substantially, but I'm happy to hire only senior engineers and let other companies pay to train the young ones. The senior engineers are more than worth the minimal financial premium.
      - mamoswined 14y ago
        "I'm not sure why our experiences differ so substantially" Sounds like you have bad projects management and let people go cowboy and build bad things because you don't communicate with each other.
- crazygringo 14y ago
  > You get experience when things happen. The more you play it safe, the less happens. And you only get wisdom when you think about your experiences. In some ways, yes. But just mundane everyday life teaches you a lot -- the hundreds of coworkers you've interacted with, the stories you've swapped about dealing with projects and bosses and clients and customers, your romantic relationships, etc. You pick up on the patterns of failure and success and, above all, good judgment, that can't really be learned any other way. > plenty of people with widsom well beyond their years Things like raw coding/product talent, pure drive -- sure. You can have these at any age. But wisdom beyond one's years? I wish it were true, but I don't think it is. Running a whole product team, dealing with employees, stakeholders, deciding what to invest resources in, etc. -- that's where maturity and experience really provide their value, so you don't make all the really costly novice mistakes. Intelligence is very helpful, but it isn't a substitute.
  - wpietri 14y ago
    > hundreds of coworkers you've interacted with, the stories you've swapped about dealing with projects and bosses and clients and customers, your romantic relationships Yes. Those are some of the experiences I'm talking about. Take a safe job, don't date, don't interact much: you'll have a lot less raw material to turn into wisdom. > But wisdom beyond one's years? I have seen it. It's easiest to spot in people who've experienced early struggle or tragedy. It's not true for all of them (or even many of them), but they definitely have the raw material.
- rapind 14y ago
  One thing you eventually realize is that experiences always happen and there's no way to prevent them. You really don't have to hunt them out. Instead you may eventually just notice and appreciate them when they do happen. I ran all over the world with a backpack before I realized that everything is relative and my adventurous experiences weren't necessarily any more valuable than a friend's who stuck around and built a family (which I'm finally doing now myself too).
- epo 14y ago
  > There are plenty of people with wisdom well beyond their years. Yes, there are. But not in the sense you want to mean. There are plenty of kids who have lived through great hardship, who have had to learn survival and coping skills which one would only expect of someone much older. Pampered, middle class American white kids don't have that kind of wisdom, never will. What you are referring is cocky people who take their limited experience as some greater truth when all they are really doing is revealing how little they know. Wisdom comes from experience. Experience requires you both to have done things in your life and to have had the time to reflect on those events. That comes with age.
  - adrianhoward 14y ago
    Wisdom comes from experience. Experience requires you both to have done things in your life and to have had the time to reflect on those events. That comes with age. ... and with having those experiences, and with having the ability to reflect and learn from them. I agree with William. I know some folk in their twenties who have done more (and reflected on what they've done and learned from it) that some folk I know that are my age (40s). Wisdom comes from having experiences and the ability to learn from them. While that's roughly correlated with age there are: * plenty of older folk who don't have many experiences, or don't have a good ability to learn from them * plenty of younger folk who push themselves - or get pushed - to have a bunch of experience and learn those lessons very well. I know people in their 20s who are wiser than people I know in their 60s. And vice versa. Personally I vastly prefer to look at people first rather than make assumptions based on age.
  - wpietri 14y ago
    I am fascinated by your claimed mindreading skills. The sense I want to mean? Thanks, I know what I'm referring to. As I explained elsewhere in the thread (and before you posted), some of the people with wisdom beyond their years are indeed the people who had to learn coping skills early. Also, wisdom definitely does not come with age. I have met unwise retirees because they assiduously did not think about their experiences.
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  There are plenty of people with wisdom well beyond their years. True. But they, in my experience anyway, they still end up way wiser at 30 than they were at 20 :-)
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Jach 14y ago
I'll be 22 in a couple weeks, and I already see the progression from when I was 12, 15, 17, 20... However, it's not a strictly monotonic function of progress. Me_{2008} had a better life philosophy than Me_{2009}, though I think Me_{2012} has surpassed both plus I know a lot more. I've learned things when I was younger that later I either forgot or learned something opposing the initial belief, and then later either relearned or realized the original belief was the correct one. I'm certain there are things I have yet to (or may never) learn/relearn and thus correct whatever is incorrect with my present self... Was there something I understood at age 16 that I don't anymore, and such a thing would make me (even just marginally) better? Probably. Do you find your self progressing after each year, or every few years, and never taking a wrong turn? As an extreme example I can imagine someone having a bad drug problem in their 30s during which they're worse off in every way than in their 20s, and only come out of it in their 40s. I think for most people improvement and regression are more subtle and happen in many dimensions. Strict progress is illusory. I think it's too easy to get caught up in your present values and discount the wisdom of your younger self just because you care about your present self more than your past self. It's also fairly obvious with older people that their minds just don't work like they did when they were in their 30s. Are they really wiser, do they really have more total knowledge than at their prime? What's the ratio of those who are and those who aren't? I also like to point out that a lot of important knowledge and wisdom can be found in books alone without experience. It's easy to forget this fact among all humans regardless of age: other people (including your past selves) may be privy to information you are not privy to.
- encoderer 14y ago
  You're right about a lot here. Gaining wisdom with age is not guaranteed, and it's not a monotonic progression. Your comment about drug addiction is insightful. But neither of those invalidate the original point -- that you can have age without wisdom, but not wisdom without age.
  - Jach 14y ago
    Taken at face value, the fact you can't have wisdom without age seems nothing more than a truism. The more interesting questions are: what age is necessary (since if old men can be utter fools, no age is sufficient) for a potential (realized or not) of significant amounts of wisdom (enough "to be dangerous" and acquire more on one's own), and is more age always better? I'd say no to the second, and arbitrarily 14 (with fuzzy boundaries) to the first. There are those in history (and right now) wiser in their teens than most others in the population above their 50s. "Whence wisdom?" is thus not answered with "age", even if people do in fact have to age to acquire wisdom given the nature of time. It is acquired through study and thought, and it is hard to come by in a vacuum. Personal experience matters to some degree, but I'd argue the experience of others is more important (and easier) to learn from. ("I don't need to try krokodil to see why it's bad", etc.) Those in history who were wise well beyond their years as a young teen usually had a wise helping hand tutoring them for many years. It's much like differential and integral calculus: a 7 year old can learn it without too much difficulty if they have the right instructor.
BadassFractal 14y ago
I would clarify that age is a proxy for wisdom only if you've meaningfully made use of the given time. A lot of people simply sleep through life, their "xp counter" goes up very slowly. This is very much in line with the whole "there's no speed limit to learning" and the commonly accepted fact that working in a startup will make you mature much faster than most other positions you might hold.
borplk 14y ago
Yes but that doesn't mean any 25 year old must be wiser than any other 18 year old. This means those 18 year olds who are smarter than the average 18 year old will be disadvantaged. I can relate to a lot of the points the article makes. When I was 14 I knew just as much as I know know in certain areas but I was never taken seriously because I was 'just a kid'.
- flatline3 14y ago
  > Yes but that doesn't mean any 25 year old must be wiser than any other 18 year old. On the flip side, it means an equally applied 25 year old will be just that much wiser than the 18 year old.
jdg 14y ago
That's also the beauty of it. You get to start with a beginners mind.
tomasien 14y ago
I agree that you gain what can be called "wisdom" in many areas: you start to see things you've seen before, and you're prepared to act appropriately. However, I don't know how much that matters. I'm 24, and when I was 17-18, I was KILLING IT as a band manager and show promoter. I sold $80,000 worth of tickets in 3 years for my own bands, and for anyone that's wondering: getting shows at good venues is borderline impossible, getting people to pay to see them another miracle. I've done things since that people may call "more significant" but they weren't. That was the hardest thing I've ever done and my most significant accomplishment. And I couldn't do it again if I started today.
GeneralMaximus 14y ago
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I turn 22 this year. I feel like I'm constantly learning new things. Not knowledge -- that's easier to obtain than ever -- but hard-won wisdom. Despite that, the list of things I know I don't know keeps growing longer each day. Age matters. And I don't think the OP was disputing this fact. Young people are constantly told that they're young and inexperienced and don't know much about life, all of which is true. However, this has a huge negative effect on their self-confidence and sense of self-worth. I'm starting a company, and the words I fear most at a negotiation are "You're still young. What do you know about business?"[1] Not a lot of people say those words out loud, but most people at least hint at them. Those words hurt. If someone points out your shitty business practices or poor hacking skills as reasons to not do business with you, you can at least go back home and fix those problems. If someone says they're not going to do business with you because you're 22, then that's that. I don't know how prevalent this phenomenon is in Western countries, but I feel ageism is a huge thing in India. You don't realize this unless you try to do things that people your age are not expected to do. Here's an anecdote: a friend -- let's call him P -- once interviewed for a senior-level position at a software company. P loves software and electronics and has deep practical knowledge about both. Not surprisingly, he did very well at the interview. According to the HR guys, he was exactly the kind of person they were looking for. So there he is post-interview, talking with one of the HR people about things he has built, when someone reading his resume notices his age for presumably the first time. Long story short, they swear at him for 15 minutes for wasting their time and tell him to GTFO of the building. All because he is 21 at the time. This sort of stuff starts to get to you after a while, which is why posts like this one are useful. It's true that age is an indicator of wisdom, but as a young person you need not let that get to you. No matter what older people tell you, you need not let your age be a limiting factor in your success. That, I think, is the essence of this post. PS: I'm not passing a moral judgement on society here. I don't mean to say that the Indian society should coddle young people. I'm just stating facts and sharing some of my feelings. -- [1] I deal with very small business in what is often called the "unorganized" sector. People in other industries may have different stories to tell.
dade_ 14y ago
Age can be a proxy for wisdom and responsibility, but it isn't very accurate. Everyone knows someone in their 40s that act as though they are 15. Further, the wisdom people gain with age includes what is not possible and what is foolish. History is filled with stories where being a little foolhardy has changed our world. This is why mentor relationships can be so valuable. I recommend everyone commit time to them, they often pay great dividends to both parties.
rjzzleep 14y ago
no it's not. most people are born stupid, live stupid and die stupid. I don't know whether your experiences are justified or not and i dare not judge. But let me put it in a simple analogy, hackernews readers itself amount to a very tiny minority of people worldwide. higher education, same story. now does either one amount to wisdom or experience? imho, the answer is no. if you look at the world right now, it looks more like the average guy gets more stupid with each day passing.

binarysolo 14y ago

Age is correlative to wisdom, and yes, wisdom has plenty of value. That being said, there are lots of exciting things to do when you know not what you realize. Especially for certain types of overachievers and perfectionists, we are significantly more hampered by what we can do excellently vs what we can simply deliver passably. Go enjoy life and collect those data points, success and failure. :)

wpietri 14y ago

> The longer you are on this earth, the more wisdom and experience you will acquire. Well, maybe. You get experience when things happen. The more you play it safe, the less happens. And you only get wisdom when you think about your experiences. There are plenty of people with wisdom well beyond their years. > The main problem with being young is that you don't realize what you've yet to realize. Bad news! It gets worse. At some point, just when you start to feel like you know what you don't know, you realize that they are making new things up faster than you can keep track. Talking to people a generation younger than me can be a humbling experience. I have to tread carefully, as you do when you're talking with a person from another country.

flatline3 14y ago
> There are plenty of people with wisdom well beyond their years. I still haven't met any. I've met plenty of smart kids, and I'm pretty sure I was one, 15 years ago. However, I had no idea what I was doing, and worse yet, had the hubris to think I did. I was insufferable, and I'd never hire 15-years-ago me. I also won't hire any other young engineers -- I'll let them find out how little they actually know on someone else's dime. On the other hand, if I was in the VC game, I'd absolutely leverage young engineers as grist for my mill. They're the most amenable to the risk, and it doesn't really matter if the vast majority of small investments fail (and they will, especially given the inexperienced teams), if you hit just a few home run exits. > Bad news! It gets worse. At some point, just when you start to feel like you know what you don't know, you realize that they are making new things up faster than you can keep track. Talking to people a generation younger than me can be a humbling experience. I have to tread carefully, as you do when you're talking with a person from another country. That's unnecessarily defeatist. There are steady advances, but there's very little that's genuinely new under the sun, and quite a bit of what the youngsters get excited about is just the cyclic rediscovery of what we already knew.
- flatline 14y ago
  > I also won't hire any other young engineers Your loss, really. I've interviewed and worked with several young engineers who were really top-notch, who worked out great, and were mature in their approach to work and life in general. They also tend to come with a lower price tag. Some have not worked out so well, but I don't have any reason to believe that the failure rate changes dramatically with age. As I myself get older, I'm not so sure that the maturity level changes all that much either. People are just better at hiding their flaws as they grow older, then you find out too late when there's an issue.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - wpietri 14y ago
    Yes. Good young engineers are very amenable to learning new approaches. And I love the raw energy of somebody who is 25 and sees every project as a fresh! exciting! new! challenge!
  - flatline3 14y ago
    I've never worked with a top-notch young engineer. Brilliant, yes, top notch, no. Every single one has had misguided priorities, significant experience gaps (leading to both bad engineering decisions and misguided priorities), and -- even in the best of them -- hubris. Despite their intelligence they've always required constant senior level supervision, and have generally been the ones most likely to create maintenance-heavy components due to inexperience. I'm not sure why our experiences differ so substantially, but I'm happy to hire only senior engineers and let other companies pay to train the young ones. The senior engineers are more than worth the minimal financial premium.
    - mamoswined 14y ago
      "I'm not sure why our experiences differ so substantially" Sounds like you have bad projects management and let people go cowboy and build bad things because you don't communicate with each other.
crazygringo 14y ago
> You get experience when things happen. The more you play it safe, the less happens. And you only get wisdom when you think about your experiences. In some ways, yes. But just mundane everyday life teaches you a lot -- the hundreds of coworkers you've interacted with, the stories you've swapped about dealing with projects and bosses and clients and customers, your romantic relationships, etc. You pick up on the patterns of failure and success and, above all, good judgment, that can't really be learned any other way. > plenty of people with widsom well beyond their years Things like raw coding/product talent, pure drive -- sure. You can have these at any age. But wisdom beyond one's years? I wish it were true, but I don't think it is. Running a whole product team, dealing with employees, stakeholders, deciding what to invest resources in, etc. -- that's where maturity and experience really provide their value, so you don't make all the really costly novice mistakes. Intelligence is very helpful, but it isn't a substitute.
- wpietri 14y ago
  > hundreds of coworkers you've interacted with, the stories you've swapped about dealing with projects and bosses and clients and customers, your romantic relationships Yes. Those are some of the experiences I'm talking about. Take a safe job, don't date, don't interact much: you'll have a lot less raw material to turn into wisdom. > But wisdom beyond one's years? I have seen it. It's easiest to spot in people who've experienced early struggle or tragedy. It's not true for all of them (or even many of them), but they definitely have the raw material.
rapind 14y ago
One thing you eventually realize is that experiences always happen and there's no way to prevent them. You really don't have to hunt them out. Instead you may eventually just notice and appreciate them when they do happen. I ran all over the world with a backpack before I realized that everything is relative and my adventurous experiences weren't necessarily any more valuable than a friend's who stuck around and built a family (which I'm finally doing now myself too).
epo 14y ago
> There are plenty of people with wisdom well beyond their years. Yes, there are. But not in the sense you want to mean. There are plenty of kids who have lived through great hardship, who have had to learn survival and coping skills which one would only expect of someone much older. Pampered, middle class American white kids don't have that kind of wisdom, never will. What you are referring is cocky people who take their limited experience as some greater truth when all they are really doing is revealing how little they know. Wisdom comes from experience. Experience requires you both to have done things in your life and to have had the time to reflect on those events. That comes with age.
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  Wisdom comes from experience. Experience requires you both to have done things in your life and to have had the time to reflect on those events. That comes with age. ... and with having those experiences, and with having the ability to reflect and learn from them. I agree with William. I know some folk in their twenties who have done more (and reflected on what they've done and learned from it) that some folk I know that are my age (40s). Wisdom comes from having experiences and the ability to learn from them. While that's roughly correlated with age there are: * plenty of older folk who don't have many experiences, or don't have a good ability to learn from them * plenty of younger folk who push themselves - or get pushed - to have a bunch of experience and learn those lessons very well. I know people in their 20s who are wiser than people I know in their 60s. And vice versa. Personally I vastly prefer to look at people first rather than make assumptions based on age.
- wpietri 14y ago
  I am fascinated by your claimed mindreading skills. The sense I want to mean? Thanks, I know what I'm referring to. As I explained elsewhere in the thread (and before you posted), some of the people with wisdom beyond their years are indeed the people who had to learn coping skills early. Also, wisdom definitely does not come with age. I have met unwise retirees because they assiduously did not think about their experiences.
adrianhoward 14y ago
There are plenty of people with wisdom well beyond their years. True. But they, in my experience anyway, they still end up way wiser at 30 than they were at 20 :-)

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

Jach 14y ago

I'll be 22 in a couple weeks, and I already see the progression from when I was 12, 15, 17, 20... However, it's not a strictly monotonic function of progress. Me_{2008} had a better life philosophy than Me_{2009}, though I think Me_{2012} has surpassed both plus I know a lot more. I've learned things when I was younger that later I either forgot or learned something opposing the initial belief, and then later either relearned or realized the original belief was the correct one. I'm certain there are things I have yet to (or may never) learn/relearn and thus correct whatever is incorrect with my present self... Was there something I understood at age 16 that I don't anymore, and such a thing would make me (even just marginally) better? Probably. Do you find your self progressing after each year, or every few years, and never taking a wrong turn? As an extreme example I can imagine someone having a bad drug problem in their 30s during which they're worse off in every way than in their 20s, and only come out of it in their 40s. I think for most people improvement and regression are more subtle and happen in many dimensions. Strict progress is illusory. I think it's too easy to get caught up in your present values and discount the wisdom of your younger self just because you care about your present self more than your past self. It's also fairly obvious with older people that their minds just don't work like they did when they were in their 30s. Are they really wiser, do they really have more total knowledge than at their prime? What's the ratio of those who are and those who aren't? I also like to point out that a lot of important knowledge and wisdom can be found in books alone without experience. It's easy to forget this fact among all humans regardless of age: other people (including your past selves) may be privy to information you are not privy to.

encoderer 14y ago
You're right about a lot here. Gaining wisdom with age is not guaranteed, and it's not a monotonic progression. Your comment about drug addiction is insightful. But neither of those invalidate the original point -- that you can have age without wisdom, but not wisdom without age.
- Jach 14y ago
  Taken at face value, the fact you can't have wisdom without age seems nothing more than a truism. The more interesting questions are: what age is necessary (since if old men can be utter fools, no age is sufficient) for a potential (realized or not) of significant amounts of wisdom (enough "to be dangerous" and acquire more on one's own), and is more age always better? I'd say no to the second, and arbitrarily 14 (with fuzzy boundaries) to the first. There are those in history (and right now) wiser in their teens than most others in the population above their 50s. "Whence wisdom?" is thus not answered with "age", even if people do in fact have to age to acquire wisdom given the nature of time. It is acquired through study and thought, and it is hard to come by in a vacuum. Personal experience matters to some degree, but I'd argue the experience of others is more important (and easier) to learn from. ("I don't need to try krokodil to see why it's bad", etc.) Those in history who were wise well beyond their years as a young teen usually had a wise helping hand tutoring them for many years. It's much like differential and integral calculus: a 7 year old can learn it without too much difficulty if they have the right instructor.

BadassFractal 14y ago

I would clarify that age is a proxy for wisdom only if you've meaningfully made use of the given time. A lot of people simply sleep through life, their "xp counter" goes up very slowly. This is very much in line with the whole "there's no speed limit to learning" and the commonly accepted fact that working in a startup will make you mature much faster than most other positions you might hold.

borplk 14y ago

Yes but that doesn't mean any 25 year old must be wiser than any other 18 year old. This means those 18 year olds who are smarter than the average 18 year old will be disadvantaged. I can relate to a lot of the points the article makes. When I was 14 I knew just as much as I know know in certain areas but I was never taken seriously because I was 'just a kid'.

flatline3 14y ago
> Yes but that doesn't mean any 25 year old must be wiser than any other 18 year old. On the flip side, it means an equally applied 25 year old will be just that much wiser than the 18 year old.

jdg 14y ago

That's also the beauty of it. You get to start with a beginners mind.

tomasien 14y ago

I agree that you gain what can be called "wisdom" in many areas: you start to see things you've seen before, and you're prepared to act appropriately. However, I don't know how much that matters. I'm 24, and when I was 17-18, I was KILLING IT as a band manager and show promoter. I sold $80,000 worth of tickets in 3 years for my own bands, and for anyone that's wondering: getting shows at good venues is borderline impossible, getting people to pay to see them another miracle. I've done things since that people may call "more significant" but they weren't. That was the hardest thing I've ever done and my most significant accomplishment. And I couldn't do it again if I started today.

GeneralMaximus 14y ago

I agree with you wholeheartedly. I turn 22 this year. I feel like I'm constantly learning new things. Not knowledge -- that's easier to obtain than ever -- but hard-won wisdom. Despite that, the list of things I know I don't know keeps growing longer each day. Age matters. And I don't think the OP was disputing this fact. Young people are constantly told that they're young and inexperienced and don't know much about life, all of which is true. However, this has a huge negative effect on their self-confidence and sense of self-worth. I'm starting a company, and the words I fear most at a negotiation are "You're still young. What do you know about business?"[1] Not a lot of people say those words out loud, but most people at least hint at them. Those words hurt. If someone points out your shitty business practices or poor hacking skills as reasons to not do business with you, you can at least go back home and fix those problems. If someone says they're not going to do business with you because you're 22, then that's that. I don't know how prevalent this phenomenon is in Western countries, but I feel ageism is a huge thing in India. You don't realize this unless you try to do things that people your age are not expected to do. Here's an anecdote: a friend -- let's call him P -- once interviewed for a senior-level position at a software company. P loves software and electronics and has deep practical knowledge about both. Not surprisingly, he did very well at the interview. According to the HR guys, he was exactly the kind of person they were looking for. So there he is post-interview, talking with one of the HR people about things he has built, when someone reading his resume notices his age for presumably the first time. Long story short, they swear at him for 15 minutes for wasting their time and tell him to GTFO of the building. All because he is 21 at the time. This sort of stuff starts to get to you after a while, which is why posts like this one are useful. It's true that age is an indicator of wisdom, but as a young person you need not let that get to you. No matter what older people tell you, you need not let your age be a limiting factor in your success. That, I think, is the essence of this post. PS: I'm not passing a moral judgement on society here. I don't mean to say that the Indian society should coddle young people. I'm just stating facts and sharing some of my feelings. -- [1] I deal with very small business in what is often called the "unorganized" sector. People in other industries may have different stories to tell.

dade_ 14y ago

Age can be a proxy for wisdom and responsibility, but it isn't very accurate. Everyone knows someone in their 40s that act as though they are 15. Further, the wisdom people gain with age includes what is not possible and what is foolish. History is filled with stories where being a little foolhardy has changed our world. This is why mentor relationships can be so valuable. I recommend everyone commit time to them, they often pay great dividends to both parties.

rjzzleep 14y ago

no it's not. most people are born stupid, live stupid and die stupid. I don't know whether your experiences are justified or not and i dare not judge. But let me put it in a simple analogy, hackernews readers itself amount to a very tiny minority of people worldwide. higher education, same story. now does either one amount to wisdom or experience? imho, the answer is no. if you look at the world right now, it looks more like the average guy gets more stupid with each day passing.