Not Just Any Old Geek

This is an AWESOME idea and I totally appreciate both Tim's original article on the subject and your efforts on this job site.

As a CTO I have long appreciated real world knowledge and experience over inexperienced, cheap, eagerness. Our employee's are all 30+, most have families and I believe that leads to well balanced and focused employee's. That is not to say I would not hire a younger employee but with age comes the kind of experience you need when building a new company quickly.

To be honest the "we work hard and play hard - we are a family" line would have put me off of a role even in my early 20's. Just because I want to work hard, it doesn't mean I want to always be hanging out with a team, I want a life as well.

I actually think that the ageism in tech is a result of it being a young industry. As more and more dev's go grey the problem will resolve itself.

One final note I have seen here and on other places - The why not become a CTO or Start your own company suggestion is fine for those that want to but there are a large number of developers who actually _love_ being a developer and have no interest in moving up into management. That's great and I hope that as the industry matures people realise that being a developer for your whole career is a choice and not a failure.

Not everyone want's to be a CTO, I'm thinking about that but I would prefer to be a programmer. I'm only 32.

I am getting to old geek status myself. From a more cynical perspective, I am not sure if we can compete with early twenty-somethings who are unjaded and buy into the silicon valley mystique. They are willing to work 12 hour days and still do the faux-japanese salarymen afterwork socializing that supposedly builds "culture".

Older geeks don't buy into this ping-pong table propaganda. Tech companies probably won't be able to squeeze all the extra work out of us in the name of passion and culture. I guess the question is, can experience/skill/efficiency really out-produce a legion of young programmers who are willing to work 1.5-2X the hours? I have no idea.

Consulting business is pretty low risk.

I started my own business when my wife was pregnant. I found it much more family friendly than 9-5 cubicle job.

A [decently managed] team of 5 will always outproduce you. No matter how little they work or how much better you are individually.

But 1-on-1? Experience wins evey time.

I'm not old old yet, but I do have the most experience[1] in my team. Spend the least time at work, strictly 8h/day, and am easily the top contributor by any engineering metric you can think of. Wish I could explain why or how, but the best I've been able to surmize is "I just get more done and spend less time going down wrong rabbit holes".

[1] most experience with our particular stack/domain, not necessarily most general irl software engineering experience