[kolbe]

My thoughts: when there is a completely new industry being built (like transistors in the 60s or social networking in the 00's), no one has an advantage with respect to experience. Young brains seem to work better at adapting to new environments than old ones (e.g. learning foreign languages), and people like Bob Noyce and Mark Zuckerberg can use this to their advantage. But once industries establish, and actual knowledge is required to gain an edge, so experience is more valuable than adaptability. I don't think we have any industries at the moment where youth is better than knowledge, though. AI/ML is not an industry for kids, but rather the best brains having been trained for decades.

Unfortunately, I think the investing class, who tends to use crude proxies like founder age/college/gpa to evaluate business potential, is still calibrated to youth->success based on recent historical precedent of Facebook/Google. And this bleeds through to the job market, where young teams get funding easier than old ones.

[tabtab]

The USA specializes in new industries for good or bad. Existing industries drift to low-wage countries with lighter labor & pollution regulations. Therefore, it may be harder to find industries that value experience in the USA. Perhaps it's time for a reverse H1B visa migration for older workers: "B1H".