[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.