I'm currently hiring a dev team for a startup, and found myself focusing on the older candidates simply because they asked the right questions about the product

I'm currently hiring a dev team for a startup, and found myself focusing on the older candidates simply because they asked the right questions about the product, project and existing tech burden. I need someone who's been to war and seen the elephant, and many younger coders just haven't been able to quickly model the problem space (in terms of the larger project) quickly and concisely. One thing that experienced devs do well is pattern matching, though for many at the cost of flexibility. By way of analogy -- and I do not mean this to be taken at all literally -- you could consider the use of the cerebrum and cerebellum in physical activity. Repeated practice of physical activities embeds the patterns in cerebellar memory, which can access them quickly; novel activities involve the slower but more flexible cerebrum, which often results in "overthinking" a shot or a move. Likewise, I think that long familiarity with a discipline results in rapid pattern matching in experienced workers,allowing them to quickly model new situations in the context of existing ones, but this also leads to the use of known-successful solutions, rather than exploring new spaces. (Org theory posits a similar effect in homogenous groups, which is one reason why the inclusion of women and minorities on corporate boards seems to improve governance and performance.) Really, there are roles for both kinds of devs, and I think we're shorting ourselves by not working hard to integrate inexperienced but flexible developers with experienced and combat-hardened ones.