And maybe that's showing in the way they build beta product/services right and left that they don't know what to do with and end up closing some few months later.
Do you expect every one of their ideas to be successful? Their success rate is actually much higher than average. Even their failures would be considered successes by others with lower standards.
A "highly competitive market" is not so highly competitive when you can throw at it a ton of cash to burn.
There is a reason they have a ton of cash.
If you hire a coder that can't code, who is the bigger failure.
Obviously it's us. I thought it was pretty clear to anyone reading this that we as a company are the ones losing out. The old guys that can't code win. They have a steady job they don't deserve.
It's probably a good (for them/us) thing that older people value their free time more. That doesn't make them better workers. I was talking about what is better for a company, not what is better for an employee. I personally don't consider my time spent at work wasted. I take pride in my work, and I like to see the fruits of my labor being utilized. I don't stay at work a minute later than I have to, because I've got a kid at home. I am not "young". I am saying I would be more likely to hire a younger person over an older person, because in my experience they are more productive on average.
We recently had to shift 6 people out of our program to other projects due to an accounting error. We got rid of 3 young people and 3 old people. Losing the young people was a big setback. The old people we lost were doing more harm than good, and I'm sure we will be more productive without them. The only reason the other department took them was because the also got the young people. This is just one example that is particularly fresh in my mind. It is not always true that young people are better than older people, but at least at my company it is true more often than not.
And I am not even saying this as a young person. The older people at our company agree that the older people suck. They just disagree on which old people suck.
The problem arises when you realize that most of the kids are not so adept at, well, solving problems that arise.
I would say most programmers in general lack this ability.
As a corollary, that lack of experience is a basis for lack of creativity.
I think it is *possible* for experience to help creativity, but it seems more often than not it is used to hinder creativity. Why figure out a new way to do something if you already (think you) know the best way.
They only know what they were taught with perhaps a few limited ideas, and haven't enough hands-on time in the real world to realize that there are multiple ways to get something done, especially on a macro scale - many of those ways being far more efficient and elegant than what they just barely learned in school.
Depending on the school, the way they were taught in school may in fact be the current best way to solve a problem. I find stubborn older programmers are just as likely to latch on to their one way of doing things, and at least the new stubborn programmers will have latched onto a slightly more modern single solution.
Oh, and I have found that the kids by and large have little-to-no people skills. At all. In a company larger than 400-500 people, the ability to explain and persuade becomes just as important as the ability to do your job.
The only thing worse than the people skills of younger programmers is the people skills of older programmers.
So let's tie it all together: As the near-median mid-40's guy, I've found that I don't have to toss my life upon the altar of the Kanban board. Instead, I find ways of getting the work done more efficiently, and have the people skills to demand (and get) management to set realistic timelines to meet the company's goals (meanwhile, the kids just bitch, moan, then go blast out 80+ hour work-weeks to meet the deadline, often at cross-purposes which blows the timeline anyway - then someone else has to go back in and refactor their barely-running shit, usually after release).
I don't see old programmers being more efficient. I see good programmers being more efficient. And as I said before, I find the younger programmers to be much more humble even when the do in fact know all these things they just learned in school (often things older programmers who went to school a long time ago, or never went to school have never heard of). I find that younger programmers, especially the ones that are still dating still have an incentive to be able to relate to other people.
And yes, the young programmers don't have all the experience they need, but they are like sponges. They absorb information you give them. If you point them in the right direction, their limitless energy and enthusiasm is often more than I myself can muster.
We have lots of old bad programmers that we can;t even give busy work to because they feel it is beneath them. Or they just bitch and moan and take a really long time to do a half ass job. Then you put some new grad on the job, and they follow directions and finish the task in a fraction of the time
...and that my friend, is what an old fucker brings to the table.
A *good* experienced programmer is invaluable. The problem is that most programmers are terrible. Young programmers are malleable. Old programmers are either really good, or more often they suck and can't change because are stubborn as well.
As I said, I was just offering a counter-generalization.
At my company we just fire the new grads with attitudes. All the old guys running the show have a real hard time firing (and in some cases not hiring) people if they are supporting families.
We seem to practice reverse age discrimination.
I can see the logic of the rationale you provided. It's just not the reality I see everyday.
I see young people who are very hard working and excited to gain experience from their older colleagues. I see older workers with bad attitudes that freak out when they don't feel they are given the appropriate level of respect. They are the ones acting like know-it-alls, and the code they write sucks. The code the young people write sucks too, but at least they take criticism well.
Maybe you're getting all the kids we fire.
Usually positions describe how much experience they require. If a very experienced person shows up to interview for an entry level engineer position expecting a salary to match his experience, then he's SOL. If you've put out a job offer for a senior engineer position, you should be expecting the candidates to want a salary to match their value. Not all companies pay as well as Google, that's why so many people want to work there.
There is really no reason for Google to not hire someone that is well qualified for the position they are seeking and asking for a salary that matches that position.
Corporations are in the business of making money. They don't care how old you are if you can help them make money.
They don't sell a single laptop on their normal site that doesn't run windows (no doubt full of bloatware). I see there are 3 laptops on the business site that run linux. This is probably better than most manufacturers that probably have 0, but as someone who really cares about running linux, I wouldn't say I feel very confident in the support provided by Dell for linux.
My work actually buys lots of dells specifically for linux desktops. They work, but I can't say it's because of anything Dell did. I'm sure they test their system with one flavor of linux, but you'd think if their commitment to linux support was good, it would be possible to by most of their laptops with linux.
I am actually eyeballing the system76 galago ultra pro, or whatever supersedes it.
"I've seen it. It's rubbish." -- Marvin the Paranoid Android
