I think this is a perfect example to test the theory they bring up about the gender pay gap. If so much value is being left on the table ignoring older workers, gather them all up into a company and beat the market.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/upshot/the-pay-gap-is-bec...
On the one hand this seems fair, on the other hand, the escalating arms race to spend all your time at the office doesn't seem like a great way to live for the ordinary employee without some ownership stake. The careers with the most gender parity were the ones without excessive time in the office associated with success.
If the time spent in office theory is true, it also makes that theory about gathering all the employees of a certain class to start a company not relevant.
- Tired employees make more errors, which then take time to fix. And if you've been working for 12 hours, you'll be mentally tired even if you're not physically tired.
- If you spend 12 hours a day at the office, lots of things you need to do in your life (e.g., arranging your social life, running errands, going to the gym, eating meals) will get done while you're at the office.
- A lot of programmers (myself included) get their best thinking done when they're relaxing away from the office.
That's actually exactly my plan should my startup receive funding. I'd say of the first 30 people I'd hire, most are probably above the age of 30. Most have families. All are at the top of their fields. In the Bay Area, those factors probably translate to an average salary of at least $250k, which is roughly double what a typical startup pays in its early days.
I'd prefer not to say.
>What does it do?
Put vaguely, delivers on the promise of future UI (think Iron Man), but does so solving some hard real-world problems in the process.
>Have you considered remote workers ...
Absolutely. While most already live in the Bay Area, there are several people from other countries. I'd have no problem with remote workers. There's definitely additional challenges involved, but nothing that can't be solved, especially with a mature team.
I find it easier to do now than I did when I was younger, I see it as just what the job is. When I was younger, a sudden demand to do something different would have me annoyed because it was distracting me from what I really wanted to be working on.
Now I know that everything will be different in 5 or 10 years, so it doesn't really matter what I'm working on as it will be irrelevant soon.
My job requires a ton of rapid context switching, but I do find it much harder now than when I was younger (I am 46).
The whole reason the problems of gender, age, and race discrimination are hard to tackle today are because they exist as widespread cultural biases, not as official corporate policies. Any company attempting to implement a sort of "reverse bias" as an official policy immediately opens themselves to legal action and a PR nightmare (because it's exploitative). Few companies are that stupid, which is why it doesn't happen.
Legally, companies can choose to be better at hiring and to try to keep their biases in check using training, policies, corporate culture, etc. This can be effective but because it also goes hand in hand with paying everyone equitably the major advantage is pulling from a larger talent pool. And make no mistake, tons of companies do just this and are successful at it. It is a significant competitive advantage. However, there's also no strong feedback mechanism that causes a company who can "beat the market" by doing things better to somehow change centuries of ingrained socio-cultural biases. That's just not how it works.
Moreover, the idea that businesses are somehow universally run by god-kings who act purely rationally is sheer fantasy that has zero relationship to reality. Business managers and owners are just human beings. They are flawed and they work against their own self-interest just as much as anyone else does. They are driven by their own desires (ego, power, status, etc.) as much as they are by a sense of trying to maximize their RoI.