
Old engineers have plenty to offer–just not to startups - jseliger
http://qz.com/187700/age-bias-silicon-valley/
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nostrademons
I'd question this premise even in its watered-down form. Startups often face a
"wall" where the initial hacked-together code simply fails to work, at all,
because the accumulated technical debt makes it impossible to push out any new
features without breaking something important.

A company full of experienced engineers that's paying attention and willing to
humble themselves enough to work on a risky project where their competition is
22 could easily take advantage of that. Let the young, overworked kids prove
out the market, and once there's demand for the product, come out with a
competitor that does the same thing but doesn't fall over. If timed right and
executed quickly, you can provide an alternative right when everybody is
frustrated by the fail-whale.

Facebook arguably did this to MySpace/Friendster. The initial version may've
been hacked together, but Zuckerburg worked very quickly to hire experienced
engineers from Google and ensure that Facebook scaled smoothly, while their
competition floundered around.

