Most IT employees who have celebrated their 40th birthday have experience with several generations of technology. The years have taught them that you should never put too much faith in new technology. Vendors make too many promises they simply can't keep. They can't deliver on features or on reliability. And mostly, vendors can't deliver on time.
Younger employees are more likely to take an optimistic view toward innovation.
They don't want to maintain older, technologically obsolete systems because they consider such work boring, and because they need hands-on experience with new systems to advance professionally. They want to dive in head first to get a feel for what's hot. IT managers are caught in the middle of this schism. They can't afford to alienate the seasoned veterans whose knowledge of older systems is difficult to replace. At the same time, the young guns represent the future and keeping them motivated is an important goal.