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Comment by user32489318 | Hacker News Reader

how is someone’s age relevant? Is a 55 y.o. Software engineer who spent 20 years in a bureaucratic wheel any better than a bright 20yo mind? They both suck in a different way! Writing an entire article with ageism as a center piece is truly pinnacle of American journalism

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I find it hard to believe that any 19-22 year old would have the appropriate level of experience to handle this responsibility.

Sure, a 55 year old also may not have the appropriate responsibility, but at least it's reasonable to expect that they could.

Pretty sure these whiz kids engineers are writing software to analyze things like where all the money goes.

Decisions will ultimately be made and implemented by the appropriate authorities, of course.

Kids tend to miss a reasonable doubt and tend to hate sincerely. This why they are good in rapid cutting regardless of consequences. Any amount of brilliance will not compensate even 10 years of experience.

> Kids tend to miss a reasonable doubt and tend to hate sincerely

What does this even mean?

that they are more hot-headed and militant in their opinions

A 55 year old learns to keep their hot-headed militant opinions to themselves. But from my experience in the insides they’re no different. And the 55 year old has held those opinions for 40 years and they’re not gonna change.

Agree. It seems largely they are just writing code to make sense of the enormous amount of data and unravel the tangled mess that is the US federal budget.

Right, 5 guys are gonna untangle what you allege is generations of tangled mess.

Got it.

How do you know that they are largely writing code? Is that because the appropriate oversight has indicated as such? What visibility do any of us have to what they are doing? And why should we trust any result they produce?

The lack of critical thinking in this entire comment section is breathtaking?

Why would you hire top software engineers to do anything else than build software systems?

Appropriate authorities? I have little faith in that at this point.

I think that’s a bit of a naive take.

19 year olds are much more malleable. They can be fanatic, and follow orders easily. They aren't educated. They have a limited grasp of morality, and can't oversee the consequences of their actions. They have no other obligation in life than to this holy task.

That's why it's relevant.

This is exactly the reason why they were selected.

Exactly. They sure are brilliant. But there are 30+ year old brilliant people as well…

Somewhat ironic to claim a "limited grasp of morality" and a lack of education when the instutions doing said education have been preaching moral relativism for a while now.

If you'd said cultural relativism, yes, some institutions (in particular sociology and the like) did preach that, but moral relativism? Those institutions certainly preached morality.

However, engineering schools have not been affected, AFAIK.

When they're as young as literally 19 years old, then it must be the case that they lack the appropriate experience.

I’m not disagreeing with you but let’s ask the question “experience for what”? Is it making a couple of dashboards, extract data from legacy systems into something more queryable, or generating a couple of expense reports? Or will they be making actual significant decisions affecting millions? How likely would that be?

Regardless, they seemingly have access to tons of financial data that they are basing brash decisions on with zero context. That combined with the fact they are reporting to a manchild that is demonstrably stupid as shit when it comes to "improving" such systems (see Twitter and the play by play of his first days there).

It takes tenure to know what sorts of discretion are required when reporting to such an extremely senior "leader", and to not get caught up in the hype of being involved in something.

(edit: added last sentence)

With age comes life experience and an appreciation that it's hard to make things better, and breaking them is rarely good.

Similarly, it is easier to convince an impressionable 19yo to do reckless and possibly illegal things.

It doesn't strike me as totally irrelevant.

None of them have seemingly ever held more than 1 full time job. Age is discussed, but experience is clearly lacking. Your argument skips over that entirely.

I think it is more about how Musk needs to surround himself with young easily impressed and gullible minds, because anyone else would probably see through him all day. These young guys are probably afraid to speak out against him, or are sucking it aaaaall up as ordered by Musk. He will have chosen who gets to tag along.

The age of one person isn't that relevant, you're right about that. The average age of an entire "agency"[0] is relevant though.

[0]: DOGE may not technically be an "agency", but whatever the case, they have and are acting with power equal to that of an agency.

Experience is an important teacher and a 19 year old doesn't have it.

Experience - which comes with age - is absolutely critical in all intellectual pursuits, including programming, government, and just about everything else. Experts and lifetime learners learn more each day. A 20 year old simply has not had the time to be exposed to the same breadth or depth of ideas, or to critique them seriously. Younger people are also far more vulnerable to hormonal impulses, manipulation, and more likely to have been exposed to a much more limited world view.

I can’t imagine anyone but insufferably arrogant - and really fucking wrong - young people making an argument to the contrary. Not that there aren’t benefits to youth - being unburdened by complexity, ignorant enough to be especially bold - but these aren’t actually that useful. And we have good evidence to support that; older founders do better, for example: https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/younger-old...

20yos with max 2 weeks of experience in the job - given the inauguration date.

Because there's a baseline age to have the necessary skills, experience, and cognitive development to be able to accomplish the task.

Their experience is relevant. If they're being brought into build data analysis systems to make sense of data of various organizations there's zero chance they've worked on a project of that scale let alone do they understand all the gotchas you need to deal with working on a project of that scale.

You're offering a completely false dichotomy here.

Yet it is encouraged that everyone votes (distributed system affecting the lives of many) and are given weapons of war to kill people (military, cops).

We have a minimum age on the Presidency. They work at the discretion of their employers.

I agree. Fascism is fascism whether it’s a teenage Octavian, Agrippa or a groyper. Underestimate them at your peril.

good quip over here https://x.com/pmarca/status/1887003073530286569

Let's face this head-on.

Not all 20-year olds are mature. No mater how bright they might be when it comes to topics in STEM. Their minds haven't matured enough, especially the male mind.

They do immature shit because there's prestige dangling in-front of them, or because they've been convinces by Musk et. al. that this is the cause to fight for.

There's a reason organized crime preys on young people. They're malleable, do what they're told, blindly ambitious, and want to please their superiors at all costs.

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