The good argument against hiring experienced people is that they will be highly opinionated about how they did things before. (Plus, the purely practical concer

The good argument against hiring experienced people is that they will be highly opinionated about how they did things before. (Plus, the purely practical concerns around cost and availability) I don't think this closely correlates to age -- a 45 year old consultant who has done short engagements at hundreds of small companies (qsa or something like that) has entirely different characteristics than someone who ran a specific function at one successful company right out of college and nothing else. I'd actually argue the 45yo in that case is less likely to be an "old person" than the 24yo! In a less pathological case, certain roles are probably more likely to make people into jerks (or select for jerks to retain) than other roles. The argument for is time, and that you might really want those opinions. It just doesn't mesh well with "everyone is equal, we are doing something new, so everyone contributes ideas" way of thinking at the earliest stages, and it is possible the conventional wisdom (or at least the version embodied in the experienced employee) will either be wrong in general, or at least wrong for your specific case now. It is probably more important that "experienced" people be polite and reasonable than that "brilliant" people be polite and reasonable, actually. The biggest jerks seem to be people who have had one or two early successes and little or no failure.