In my experience, older employees are able to recall information to solve a problem, but the recall may be incomplete, leading to a quicker, but less effective solution. Whereas, younger employees often need more time because they don't specifically remember solutions, but they are able to find, categorize, and process information faster, often leading to a slower, but more complete and robust solution.
Not sure if it's a product of education and upbringing in different worlds, or a product of experience, but it's fascinating to me.
I also don't try hard to memorise things I know I can trivially lookup.
Other things I have a directory called `useful_things` that has markdown files broken down by category I can quickly grep for that thing I remember I needed but not how to do.
It even comes to inbox organization. All the older team members her have folders etc to organize everything. The younger ones - we have one large inbox with everything and just search by remembering how to look for it (“oh yeah, that email had the word “altruistic” in it and it Jeff was involved)
If you think about it, that’s just how Google and constant internet connection programmed us... knowing how to find information became more valuable than knowing information.
Fun fact: this is Ken Jennings method for practicing for Jeopardy, mental models of items and triggers with surrounding facts.