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I’m 10 years older, my experience has been that getting to ask stupid questions is one of the joys of age/seniority/security. Very often everyone else in the room has the same stupid question but you get to look like a stone cold genius because you were willing to risk looking silly.

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I guess maybe in 10 years I'll be working with 30 year olds who understand and value of that approach as I do today.

My current reality is that I'm a 33 year old working with 20 year olds who think they're geniuses who are going to take over the world in 5 years; from that viewpoint, I'm essentially a failed engineer because I didn't build a Facebook, Uber or AirBnB even though I had 10 years to do it.

From seeing your posts, I think you have a psychologica lock that under mines your self-confidence.

I'm curious what type of company has these team demographics. Startup, agency, SMB, bigcorp, academia, or?

Usually this kind of thing comes from “trying to keep costs down” at a poorly funded firm, usually startup-ish. I’ve worked places where the oldest engineer was 30 and it’s rough, quality and stability just aren’t in the average 25 year old’s toolkit.

Don't mislead yourself, that benefit comes exclusively from security. Age and seniority only contribution is some weak correlation to security.

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