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Comment by apples_oranges | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like a great place to work. I wonder about the "young people with extraordinary ability" however. Surely they would have also succeeded with "older people with extraordinary ability"? (ok they probably would cost them more..)

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I suspect that only young people can be that ruthlessly data-driven. Us older people tend to have experience that we're attached to, and a certain psychological resistance to the idea that the stuff we've been doing for most of our career was actually a waste of time.

I would say it depends on the person. I personally assume that how I did things in the past is no longer the state of the art and I always look towards younger engineers or outside resources to figure out the new best way, informing my decision based on mistakes of the past.

And if the data says I'm wrong, I trust it. I have no belief that I've already found the best solution.

I don’t see how you can be a technologist in the long run without this attitude. Maybe this is the no true Scotsman fallacy, but one of the key aspects of technology is it will change right underneath you often. (Except SQL injection, apparently, the team keeps finding it at an alarming rate in modern apps).

It really depends on the person. I am in my late 30s and experience has taught me that there is a good chance the way I am working today will be obsolete tomorrow. As a manager I embrace this and encourage the people in my team to bring new ways of thinking and working. The kind of culture this creates encourages constant experimentation which ultimately leads to better results.

Older people with extraordinary abilities have, in traditional bureaucratic companies, learned that bullshitting and playing politics is the easiest way to succeed. When they internalize this way of working, there is no going back; it makes them lazy and cynical.

Somehow, it requires a certain amount of naivety to _actually_ try to solve a hard problem instead of pretending to do something and then write a 100 page bullshit report (or mostly copy an old report) on it.

I wouldn't want to work at a company with controversial business practices and "screw you we do what we want" attitude towards their customers, no matter what a great environment is inside.

Depends on what you want of course, but I want to extract peak performance from myself that's why it sounds good to me. (I do not however like working overtime.)

Worked there for 7 years - it's a fantastic place to work. It's all about relationships to get things done, but the people are generally fantastic and well-meaning.

The opportunity is the paydirt.

The experienced oldsters make up the sluice.

The youngsters represent the water.

Nobody worries much about the spillage if there's gold in the pan.

what

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