[gnu8]

> willingness to grind through problems is also probably lower

Maybe I misunderstand what you’re saying here but I don’t think this is fair. An older worker should know to put the problem down at 5 PM and walk away from it, but that doesn’t mean they’re unwilling to work on a problem they haven’t solved before.

At least, I hope some day when I’m an elderly ex convict that I will still be able and willing to solve new problems.

[captaincaveman]

In my experience (not 60 but I don't see it getting better), is when learning some arbitrary tech you have to bump your head on a lot of tedious things, there is so much to learn it takes a lot of effort to get to that eureka point. With age I am less inclined to dedicate hours to this, the outcome doesn't feel worth the effort anymore, the knowledge soon becomes redundant as the new shiny comes along. Perhaps this due to experience rather than age to be fair.

Also as a junior engineer, its not that the problem your trying to crack is likely to be some business problem, most likely some stupid bug in your code.