Older workers, while more experienced, are also more expensive. You can't hire a 40 or 50 yo hacker for what you can pay someone a few years out of college. On

Older workers, while more experienced, are also more expensive. You can't hire a 40 or 50 yo hacker for what you can pay someone a few years out of college. On the other hand there is a basic cost to each employee regardless of salary, so the higher pay is not proportionally as high as comparing salaries. On the gripping hand, older employees often have families, who incur more expense for health care and so on. You can expect older people to have health issues on their own, too. This is a fairly big deal in the US, where the health care payment system is broken.