[onetwotree]

Basically this. I was going to contrast a couple of (heavily anonymized) employees we just hired - a smart but inexperienced twenty something and a smart and very experienced 40 something, when I just remembered that I'd run into the 20 something at the office on a Sunday.

I was just there to show the new office and some of our toys to my girlfriend, he was there because he was really excited about the job and just wanted to really kill it.

Twenty year olds generally haven't figured out what really matters in life, especially when it comes to work life balance. That's a valuable asset to most companies.

I told the kid to go home and have some fun, but I don't think he did. Later that day the 40-year old posted a picture in slack of him flying a drone with his kids, and just looking happy as a clam in mud.

[kaspm]

See here's the thing... as a "seasoned" engineer who now has work-life balance, I was once a 20-something engineer working for pizza on crud apps in the office on Sunday, that time _is_ fun. It was super satisfying and fulfilling to learn new tech, create something, solve a business problem and get a raise and promotion because of it. Even doing that some weekends, I still had plenty of time to hang out with friends and fly drones (hack TiVos in my case) or whatever.

As I got older, got married, had kids, that time is now spent helping my kids grow up. I have other things that take precedence over it. Honestly, I still think it would be fun to hack out a project for work on a weekend. I just don't have that luxury anymore.

I like my life equally (or rather, I try to not constantly judge my life) now as I did then but it's different.

Hopefully your 40-year old employee brings something different to the table - domain expertise, ideas born of repetition, lack of mistakes, dedication to quality craft that is equivalent to the raw output of your 20-something.