I find this an interesting article in light of the previous "Oh shit I'm 30 and haven't done anything!" article.
There are young engineers who are too gullible and naive. Many VC's eat these folks for lunch like Hollywood eats wannabe movies stars. I met a guy who said that after his first startup he felt like some young kid who came out to act and settled for a role in an adult film, only to have all the proceeds go to the producer and a reputation sullied by is previous 'history.' His startup had a good exit, for the VCs but was considered 'poorly executed' so he took the heat.
I've met older engineers who were amazing creative forces to be reckoned with in their 'day' but are now stuck in a bitter, curmudgeonly loop rebelling against new technologies because they 'add no value over the old way which still works fine thank you very much.' They get reviews they don't understand, things like 'stuck in your ways, not a team player, argumentative.'
Flashy loud mouth hipsters reflect badly on young entrepreneurs and bitter engineers reflect badly on older engineers. Its not like you can change that though.
All you can do is take an engineer, listen to their ideas and observe their work, and if they are good it will show. If they are past their sell by date, that will show too. And if they are more air than insight, well that comes out pretty quickly too.
One thing I've come to appreciate is how dangerous a generalization can be.
Let's look at the reason for the "stuck in your ways" dynamic. There is a saying in the software engineering world, which is "Those who do not learn from UNIX are destined to reinvent it badly." Very often times new approaches come to the fore as fads which then fade away just as quickly. Often times these new approaches have tradeoffs people make because they don't understand the value of the old approaches. Nothing shows this better than something like Ruby on Rails, a technology personally I will never touch more than I have to.
Older engineers who have been around the block tend to assume new technologies are fads until proven otherwise. Many have been burned a few times. Many have learned the hard way that the best engineers are methodologically conservative. And so they get labelled as stuck in their ways not because they are not creative, but rather because they are cautious about new fads. The way to sell to these engineers is to demonstrate understanding of the values of the old methods as well as the benefits of the new approaches.
All you can do is take an engineer, listen to their ideas and observe their work, and if they are good it will show. If they are past their sell by date, that will show too. And if they are more air than insight, well that comes out pretty quickly too.
There are young engineers who are too gullible and naive. Many VC's eat these folks for lunch like Hollywood eats wannabe movies stars. I met a guy who said that after his first startup he felt like some young kid who came out to act and settled for a role in an adult film, only to have all the proceeds go to the producer and a reputation sullied by is previous 'history.' His startup had a good exit, for the VCs but was considered 'poorly executed' so he took the heat.
I've met older engineers who were amazing creative forces to be reckoned with in their 'day' but are now stuck in a bitter, curmudgeonly loop rebelling against new technologies because they 'add no value over the old way which still works fine thank you very much.' They get reviews they don't understand, things like 'stuck in your ways, not a team player, argumentative.'
Flashy loud mouth hipsters reflect badly on young entrepreneurs and bitter engineers reflect badly on older engineers. Its not like you can change that though.
All you can do is take an engineer, listen to their ideas and observe their work, and if they are good it will show. If they are past their sell by date, that will show too. And if they are more air than insight, well that comes out pretty quickly too.
One thing I've come to appreciate is how dangerous a generalization can be.