[neilv]

It's a not-unusual theory, but it's bumping into something I'd really like to avoid (especially on HN), which is negative generalizations of different age/gender/racial/familystatus/etc. demographics in business contexts.

(In the US, a super HR person's Spidey Sense would tingle, and they'd fly across the building and yank the keyboard out of someone's hands, before certain sentences could be finished. Then sit down for a constructive discussion about why generalizations are not only counterproductive and unfair, but also a big policy no-no at most established US companies. But on HN, we just have to frequently ask to please stop saying that.)

[throwway120385]

It's also not really helpful to generalize like that in the sense that I've known plenty of 50+ senior engineers who were very curious and very capable. And they often had a lot of advice about pitfalls to avoid when applying new technologies because they had used the same technology 20 years ago when it was called something else or sold by a different vendor. People often deride experience on here, but I've gotten a lot of mileage professionally out of learning from other peoples' experiences. Occasionally I have to explain that "yes, things are really different now" but that's good because if I'm wrong about that I get to find out before I invest a bunch of time in a bad approach.

[chrisweekly]

also (citation needed, I know), IIRC the median founder age for successful startups in a decade was like 48