Dude, you're arguing from stereotypes. Saying "as people get older they get less competent" is just silly; I can tell there's the same distribution in competence in a set of 25- year-olds that there is in 55-year-olds.
(It is true that the 25-yos haven't had a chance to fall behind yet, and a lot of them will. But those are the same bozos who show up in the DailyWTF today doing dumb stuff with modern tools, and in 30 years nobody will care about their code.)
And "a 50-something should have enough savings to bankroll his own startup" is a close second in silly. Evidently you haven't watched too closely what's happened in finance over the last thirty years. (A few folks have done well, many more have been close to wiped-out. Look up "Pareto distribution".)
Mature engineers are just as capable or running on adrenaline (or just the high of building somthing really great) when needed as younger folks. However, they're more likely to know whether you really have an event calling for adrenaline, or are just looking to get 80 hours of work for 40 hours of salary. (Or are building something truly great as opposed to just a clone of something that's been done and failed six times already, but in node.js this time instead of Rails)
They're also less likely to have the gullibility to buy into the equity compensation fantasies that a lot of startups lean on (while the VC guys stack the deck, and the techs show up here later whining about "those bastards screwed me on my stock options")
An implication of the parent comment is that hiring at 50+ incurs adverse selection, because 50+ developers that are on the market for full time work have demonstrated inability to succeed in startups.
This sentiment misunderstands startups as well as software development careers.
Most people will not succeed with startups.
Most people who start companies fail.
Most professional developers will opt not to start companies because the (low) success rate is obvious.
The people who succeed with startups are not particularly likely to be amazing software developers. In fact, the impedance mismatch between raw programming talent and software startup success is one of the more irritating things about working in startups.
There's no statistical observation to be made from someone's lack of success building companies.
> The people who succeed with startups are not particularly likely to be amazing software developers. In fact, the impedance mismatch between raw programming talent and software startup success is one of the more irritating things about working in startups.
From my experience, the people who succeed and reach the big payout tend to be the bottom quarter in terms of developer skill. They had an idea early enough, new enough or with enough impact to gain traction. Later professional developers come in to clean up their mess.
Unfortunately, after the payout these low-skill (from a development sense) tend to think they were actually highly skilled. They don't repeat their first success, often they become "Angel investors".
On the other hand. If you're hiring you should simply enjoy this large, un-mined vein of talent. Hopefully your competition doesn't catch on.
(It is true that the 25-yos haven't had a chance to fall behind yet, and a lot of them will. But those are the same bozos who show up in the DailyWTF today doing dumb stuff with modern tools, and in 30 years nobody will care about their code.)
And "a 50-something should have enough savings to bankroll his own startup" is a close second in silly. Evidently you haven't watched too closely what's happened in finance over the last thirty years. (A few folks have done well, many more have been close to wiped-out. Look up "Pareto distribution".)
Mature engineers are just as capable or running on adrenaline (or just the high of building somthing really great) when needed as younger folks. However, they're more likely to know whether you really have an event calling for adrenaline, or are just looking to get 80 hours of work for 40 hours of salary. (Or are building something truly great as opposed to just a clone of something that's been done and failed six times already, but in node.js this time instead of Rails)
They're also less likely to have the gullibility to buy into the equity compensation fantasies that a lot of startups lean on (while the VC guys stack the deck, and the techs show up here later whining about "those bastards screwed me on my stock options")