I've heard people refer to them as performance drugs, good for short term gain, but possible side effects.
They can challenge authority. They can get work done twice as fast, and you'd get a good deal if they show up only 80% of the time. The star players can also be divas, challenge bosses. Some cultures have more difficulty dealing with it and sometimes it comes with drama.
They tend to be a little stubborn. I met one senior with almost 10 years experience who refused to use source control or log into Trello. Project management for that project fell apart because the key members were not on it.
Are they being stubborn because they've seen this before and know it leads to a bad place? (probably not when they're objecting to Git or Trello)
Or are they being stubborn because they don't want to learn new things? (which sounds more the case here)
If the second one, then that's a problem. But it's got nothing to do with their age or experience. I've seen total newbie coders unwilling to learn Git because they don't think they need it (or it scares them, or whatever). It's easier to justify the mindset with age and experience, but it's not caused by age or experience.
If, however, it's the first kind of stubborn, then that's gold. That's what you need. That's the thing that stops teams from repeating the same mistakes over again.
Instead of dismissing it all as "stubborn", it might be worth checking the rationale behind the reluctance.
Yeah, that situation was a, "We've been perfectly fine managing bigger projects with Excel and emails for years."
But that's an extreme case for example. Much of the time it's in a gray area.
Is this guy refusing to use JS because it's a buggy language or because it threatens his 7 years of PHP experience? Is React Native really that bad or does it just threaten this guy's native iOS experience? Is it some expert instinct to put semicolons on JS code or just FUD?
The true experts usually develop a kind of instinct for danger, so you probably want to trust them when it's FUD.
It goes a lot deeper than just seeing this person have X years of experience. You have to filter them for quality years of experience.
Is it a bad sign that this guy is willing to take a 30% pay cut from his qualifications? After all, the best people want to be challenged. Maybe he wants less workload so he can focus on a side project. Or it could just be that he has no intent of actually improving, just wanting a good enough job to pay the bills.
They can challenge authority. They can get work done twice as fast, and you'd get a good deal if they show up only 80% of the time. The star players can also be divas, challenge bosses. Some cultures have more difficulty dealing with it and sometimes it comes with drama.
They tend to be a little stubborn. I met one senior with almost 10 years experience who refused to use source control or log into Trello. Project management for that project fell apart because the key members were not on it.