I am curious why you wouldn't offer market-rate salary with paid vacation and benefits to all employees. What does age have to do with it?
> What does age have to do with it?
I'll translate: "Age correlates with an unwillingness to be exploited and the experience to recognize when that's about to happen."
And I would call it entitlement vs. “not wanting to be exploited”.
You don’t bring your needs to the market, you bring skills. The market pays you appropriately for those skills.
If a candidate and the employer can’t reach an agreement, so be it. If that is because the candidate inflates their expectations because of their age [or wisdom], well, see previous sentence.
I turn 40 this December; 20 years ago I got bought with just being able to get into a programming job (in the small town in La Paz, BCS Mexico), the fact that I was paid OK was good Vacations and all that extra stuff was just icing on the cake. I didn't care about the "retirement" things (in Mexico by law everyone gets "poor mans" version of 401k). 20 years later, darn I am sure I am WAY more picky than then.
But when you are in a position to hire and there is no apparent benefit to hiring someone who wants more money vs someone with the same skills and relevant experience, why would you hire the person who wants more money?
I responded to someone who literally said older guys ask for too much and that's why they don't hire them
That is not at all what I said. In my experience, older people almost always ask for above market compensation regardless of experience. We don’t hire people that ask for too much money regardless of age.
Who you pick is entirely up to your company. If you don't super expensive people, that's fine. Maybe you already have those?