Might be smart at any age to take the cash plus the lottery tickets in addition to the technical progress which could be leveraged to greater worth than both combined.

It can be said that the increasing emphasis on growth rates over other factors in the 21st century has driven the need for average engineers in excess of the above-average engineers that could be supplied, resulting in an overall decline in the quality of the engineering as time goes by.

Most importantly, some 22-year-olds have higher quality standards than others to begin with, and among these some will have trouble maintaining their best quality while others can continuously improve with age in ways that can not be done over the short term.

When it comes to being set in your ways at work, this should not be confused with a lifestyle of non-trendy workwear and preferring to just grill out by the pool every Saturday. Someone whom by nature is more versatile at work, can also have further years dwelling outside more boxes than less experienced operators are aware of. And thousands of hours more training to develop more not less energy plus increasingly efficient application of it, and with more decades of responsibilty-handling experience, no wonder they are filtered out by age-limiting employers who can not yet comprehend the outsized possibilities.

Sometimes older workers are so old-fashioned they don't spend any time at work on Facebook at all, getting shit done out of habit when needed can have its advantages when progress needs to be measurable.

Someone with 20 years of this type of versatility at work is simply 10X more valuable than someone having only two years along the path. You have to expect them to be worth more in compensation.

An outfit that is truly capable of leveraging its people will get a 10X return, and will very rarely approach 10X the compensation.

Too bad for so many so-called leaders it can be beyond their inherent limitations to herd the cats when there is a much more experienced, better-compensated, or more-performant cat in the herd. You can not let team perception of a compensation multiple become inflated beyond reality, instead it should be used to inspire younger workers to double their own productivity as realistically as they can without expecting to get 2X their compensation either anytime soon, while still making visible progress toward being better compensated for years of increasing productivity themselves.

You too, could be there someday, but only if you manage to overcome the obstacles to survive some of which are geared towards younger people.

Or maybe you plan to stagnate if you think it is unavoidable as you get older, your choice.

You probably won't get 10X the appreciation either way.

Then again there are those having decades of preference for working without days off when meaningful milestones need to be reached, and they couldn't realistically depend on many in their 20's to keep up very productively anyway under those conditions during their early years in our 24-hour business. Plus even under ordinary conditions a super-hairy 36-hour day can still come up.

Younger workers just seem less motivated these days, I don't call it lazy like some oldtimers do but it can give an unfair advantage to a seasoned higher performance operator who is often able to overcome milestones in ways that make the difference between a deadline being destructive versus productive financially.

Plus it takes a few years of hand holding and confidence-building before I want you doing this on your own.

These are some expensive ships.

At any age, starting up a company full-in takes a certain particularity of ambition that not everyone will know or understand. If and when I start another company, I would want to be able to leverage both the dedicated top 40-year-old VB developer in addition to the dedicated top fresh academic performer, along with the dedicated top 60-year-old FORTRAN operator.

Anything less would be limiting the shareholders' upside to less than its full potential, I might as well give up if I can't afford the 20X 60+year-old this time (40X the first year recruit).