I was sitting at lunch the other day at my large tech company office when I overheard a wonderful conversation from the table behind me about the "kinds" of managers a team might have that included this snippet:
"I mean, you could get someone midcareer, say age 25 or so, and they'll be really fiery and excited, but they won't know everything yet. But it means that you can figure it out. Or, I mean you could get someone super senior like 35, and then they'll be the expert but they'll be old and slow"
Not only did this go entirely unchallenged, but everyone seemed fully in agreement.
This is one example, but conversations like this that assume that by 35 or at most 40 you're all worn out and washed up are fairly common.
Having started this job during COVID, I didn't realize how young everyone in my company is, but after this conversation, I realized that I only know one engineer over 40 here.
(I know some managers that are over 40, but none that I know are yet 50.)
I was sitting at lunch the other day at my large tech company office when I overheard a wonderful conversation from the table behind me about the "kinds" of managers a team might have that included this snippet:
"I mean, you could get someone midcareer, say age 25 or so, and they'll be really fiery and excited, but they won't know everything yet. But it means that you can figure it out. Or, I mean you could get someone super senior like 35, and then they'll be the expert but they'll be old and slow"
Not only did this go entirely unchallenged, but everyone seemed fully in agreement.
This is one example, but conversations like this that assume that by 35 or at most 40 you're all worn out and washed up are fairly common.
Having started this job during COVID, I didn't realize how young everyone in my company is, but after this conversation, I realized that I only know one engineer over 40 here.
(I know some managers that are over 40, but none that I know are yet 50.)