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Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

I think the young founder trope persists for social reasons, not technical. The average 25 year old "understands" the internet on a very different level than the average 35 year old- simply as a consequence of having grown up around it.

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That's probably the meme, but being around during construction and occasionally being the one building it might get you a deeper understanding imho.

A deeper understanding of how it works, etc sure... but not necessarily a deeper understanding of how the younger folk interact with it.

I remember reading a discussion of how some technology (lets go with smart phones for lack of my memory) was going to make newer generations lives so much different. They'll be focused around them because they're so amazing and useful. What <the folks that said that> didn't really understand was that, to the younger generation, the smart phone wasn't some wonder, amazing device that can do lots of things. Rather, it just WAS.

It's like a door. If you lived before doors, they would be amazing... you'd think everyone younger than you would be amazed they have it and love it. But they don't. To them, it has always been that way, the door just IS.

I also think it's social reasons, but not really about understanding the internet. More relevant imo is that younger people more often have flexible lifestyles where they can take a year or two off from "real life" to eat ramen and live in the office starting a company that's statistically likely to fail. Even if it does fail, it's an interesting learning experience, and they can always get a regular job afterwards. Some older people can also do that, but more are in situations where for family or other reasons they aren't likely to find that appealing.

I disagree. Ask them what "recursive queries" in DNS are. Ask them to explain the difference between a forward and reverse lookup. DNS is fundamental to "The Internet" and hardly any young person I have met can answer these basic questions about how it works. Now they do "understand" how to post pictures on Facebook, but Facebook is not the Internet.

Maybe because it doesn't matter

Well, I disagree with that fundamentally. You don't found a successful tech company because you know what a recursive DNS query is. You do it because you know your market and you understand your customer.

Bah. It's mostly for business reasons. You can milk young developers (and founders, if you're a VC) much more efficiently, and you can trick them into business deals that hurt them much more easily.

Can't argue with this. I pulled some crazy hours in my more naive days hoping to get a payout from my "equity."

You're right that it's social, in that a lot of 25 year olds think that they understand the Internet better because they grew up with it. What it usually really means is that they take a lot of things on faith because it's all they've ever known. I can't tell you how many 20-something "social media experts" have had a hard time answering specific and detailed skeptical questions.

i dont think the 25 yo understand the internet "on a different level" because they are born with the internet. Using something early doesnt mean you understand how it works at all. Young people may learn faster though, but older people are supposed to know more already.

My point is that "how it works" isn't that important. "What it changes", is. I was in college in the pre-Facebook era, so I don't really have a handle on how different it was to have access during college years. Now teenagers are Snapchatting each other, and I don't do that either- so I don't understand the behaviour as well as younger people than myself.

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