[sirsinsalot]

I'm 35, and i've done A LOT of tech hiring. I've witnessed first-hand other managers making comments about "older" coders such as "well, do we think they're going to be adapable?" or "Is it a good culture fit?"

These questions are always thinly veiled ageism.

Regardless of age, some people become set in their ways. With age, this becomes more apparent and noticeable because people are looking for it. Sometimes being older DOES mean a lack of open mindedness and adaptability.

I think the perfect hire is a young head on old shoulders. Experience, wisdom, intuition, a lack of dogma, honed pragmatism ... but also a willingness to be wrong and persist, a ragged determination that comes with youthful foolishness.

So, even for me, age does correlate with some negative traits that MAY develop. I try my best to stay current, but use my developed nose to sniff out the fads, trends and anything without substance.

I feel this in myself and others provides massive value, more than the benefits of youth.

[jart]

It shows a lack of respect to call someone set in their ways, because no rational person wants to abandon their advantage to follow the vogue trends of the younger generation. It's basically like resetting your experience points back to zero. If you can't use someone for the coding craft they actually have, then you're leaving them with just soft skills and computer science judgement, in which case they'd be better served doing management.

[hnfong]

> no rational person wants to abandon their advantage to follow the vogue trends of the younger generation. It's basically like resetting your experience points back to zero

This a real dilemma and why people generally get more inflexible as they age.

On the one hand experience is definitely valuable. On the other modern society tends to "improve" (even if a lot of trends are fads). The value of experience and the cost of not following modern, better trends tends to have a complicated relationship, and eventually as you enter old age, society has changed so much that the value of experience becomes less relevant and the cost of being disconnected with modern society is so great that it becomes a liability.

But still, at every point in time, your point that no rational person wants to reset their XP to zero still holds. So it's inevitable.

I sometimes try to fight that by trying extra hard in understanding the newer trends and trying to adopt to them, but it's an uphill battle.

"Set in their ways" is probably just a way to describe the inevitable result. It's rational all the way down, but nobody said a rational agent would live happily ever after...

[sirsinsalot]

I've worked with people "set in their ways", and while I am empathic towards the human causes of this, it does disrupt work.

On-boarding someone who becomes visibly angry with processes, tools and approaches they're not familiar with due to nothing but stubbornness and fear, is difficult.

I also made the distinction between this and ignoring rubbish trends as a specific point.

As I said, this trait isn't causally linked with age, it is correlated in my experience. This is why, all of us, must ensure we stay plastic as we age.