I think it depends on the person. I clearly have seen older developers that are beyond their prime, but I have also seen young developers who are so ADD that they never stand a chance of going far in the profession. Like any professional, the individual needs to stay current on skills as well as fit mentally and physically. And yes, being fit is rather important as you get older and makes a huge difference in your mental abilities. Most importantly, however, the individual (old or young) must earn the company more than they make.

Good Point... The key point I think most miss is that their career, like a company, either moves forward or backwards.

I agree that your approach is an equal (and less risky) approach. Either career path one chooses, however, still requires a substantial re-investment of some kind, which I think the vast majority of technical people tend to forget.

Also, I find it humorous on the discussions of a $150K developer being laid off because he costs so much. I think many have lost touch with the realities of how businesses run. If that employee is billing out consistently to a entrenched happy client for 40 hours @ $165 per hour, then I would say his compensation is a bargain. Also, if that employee is doing nothing more than keeping the lights running, then I would make the argument that he should never had gotten that level of compensation to begin with.

Look no further than the Fukushima "incident" to answer that question....

Keep in mind that Japan has a much large aging population than the US. Also, clearly this poster does not realize that age and wisdom do not always correspond.. Respect must be earned in my opinion...

Clearly you statement makes too much sense to be true... Also, clearly you have never been in the presence of your typically executive who thinks the answer to all of worlds problems is to outsource everything except his own job....

Older and Younger employees, in my opinion, are like apples and oranges.

Your internal talent which is what separates you from your competitors are what your older employees are for. The ones who naturally do not want to improve themselves over time are naturally weeded out. The ones I have found that are best generally (not always) are individuals who workout early in the morning, stay fit, and still maintain a professionalism in their 40's that a free out of school college student typically use a a mentor type.

Your young developers are cheaper, but require allot of training, mentoring, as well a allot of patience working with them. They are your future internal talent, however, so it is critical that you make sure you spend the time to help them grow their careers even if it is not eventually with my company.

Age is a minor issue if you ask me. A larger issue is that you tend to hit a wall on compensation around your early 30's. Meaning, my experience is that around $130K consistantly is about the best you can do working for someone. Once you reach that barrier, the logical next step is to start building/marketing your own products/services. Personally, I am not a big fan of services because you have to keep your work performance at such a rate that burnout because a big issue. Also, being an older developer, the advantage you have over younger developers is that hopefully you have saved a good part of that high salary rather than blowing it on fast cars and houses so that it opens up options for you...

In short... As a developer, you need to either grow or dwindle. Some do not have the skills/desire to move forward. For those, the decline in wages and stagnation of performance is clearly going to be a problem over the long haul.

Wooooohhh... You are talking about racial profiling!!! NO WAY!!! Thats ILLEGAL, and our highly respected government officials say that kind of thing does not work... The only people who do dumb things like that are the Europeans, Israelis, and basically every other country in the world, but what do they know about security anyway???? Nope, our super high tech equipment, high paid TSA agents can smell out any problems with their multi-billion dollar budgets and super high tech scanning equipment.... Sleep safe on that flight while the TSA is on duty burning thru those greenbacks. In fact, what do the people in Europe and especially Israelis know anything about bombings anyway? I mean when I was in London last month one of the security people laughed at me when I started to take off my shoes... I recall him saying something like "dumb ass american".... I didn't worry, though because I KNOW he is the dumb one because our TSA people are the experts after all because we had Sept. 11...

I personally think this is overplayed... The worst we can do is to put the CO2 levels back to what they were in the dinosaur days... Yes, I agree that the atmosphere this time is much thinner, and I also agree that it will create a different equilibrium of weather patterns. As always, we will get by, however...

It is laughable that law enforcement needs these "tools" when they already have more than enough tools to tell them speed/direction of the auto in a crash. Also, no doubt that insurance companies love data to invalidate your insurance contract on the one rare occasion that you actually collect on your policy.

I am pretty sure that the true reason for these "black box" is to force GPS data to be collected so that it can be used by governments to tax by location and distance travelled. In local government meetings, it has been brought up years ago about the "dark side" to more fuel efficient autos (aka. Poorer people).

The one I am annoyed with is Apple. Apple should realize that this type of attack threatens their app-store model, and assume the responsibility of providing IP protection for their individual developers instead of leaving them in the cold. Lodsys has already admitted that they will not take on a big company due to the cost of litigation. Also, Apple receives 30% of their revenues of these developers, so they need to step in and provide patent indemnity for this particular case.

Look on the bright side... Hopefully this will finally get the big companies to realize the current absurdity in the patent system, and push their paid for politicians to reform the system. Their practice of building a war chests of patents does little when you have a someone like this who (like wall street and finance in general) builds nothing and has no productive business function.

So your saying sugar has an osmosis "action" to it?? Ummm... Its been a while since I took biology, but I thought cellular fluid was controlled by sodium (retains water) and potassium (gives up water)... Sugar breaks down to fructose (absorbed/converted in the liver) and glucose (absorbed in the stomach/small intestine)

Yes, I am guessing glucose must be even worse....I mean EVERYONE dies, and everyone is exposed to glucose on a daily basis, so it MUST be the cause right???

In short... Have you ever wondered that it might just be the sheer amount of calories that makes junk food so bad for you???

Yes... In fact, HFCS seems to kill everyone around the 7th decade of their young pristine lives... Wow!! Brilliant Analysis!!!

Wakeup call!!! First, the US is not an agricultural nation anymore, so, we don't really have allot of peasants... Apparently John Deere got your peasants before HFCS got a chance.... Also, the average life expectancy has almost doubled from what it was before HFCS even existed....

Also, Im having a hard time linking heart disease people becoming diabetic...

Well put me in the ignorant group because countless research has been spent on this subject... HFCS (55% fructose - 45% glucose) is no worse than sucrose (50% fructose - 50% glucose)... That problem is the sheer amount of calories... Also, the only reason they there is slightly more fructose than glucose is simply because they found it tastes sweeter this way. Meaning, HFCS actually has FEWER calories then a similar sweeter that uses sucrose...