Something like this makes a good counter-point in general: http://www.forbes.com/sites/krisztinaholly/2014/01/15/why-great-entrepreneurs-are-older-than-you-thi

Something like this makes a good counter-point in general: http://www.forbes.com/sites/krisztinaholly/2014/01/15/why-great-entrepreneurs-are-older-than-you-think/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/krisztinaholly/2014/01/15/why-gr... In my particular case, every workplace I've worked in over the years has had a huge range of ages for software engineers. Without asking people you'd be hard pressed to know how old they were. The performance of the older engineers seemed about the same on average as their younger ones. There were some stellar and curious engineers, just as there were the disinterested ones. The same applied to both groups. So I think saying something like "The average X year old engineer is worse than the average Y engineer" isn't useful. What's your sample size for that average? Agree with you on the half-pay/half-hours thing. I actually would love to see less traditional reliance on 'seat time' and more flexible working conditions all around.