Member-only story
We Hired a 46-Year-Old Engineer. Half the Team Thought He Was Too Old for Modern Software
He didn’t know our favorite framework, refused to work weekends, and asked questions nobody had bothered asking in years. The trouble started when our fastest developer decided to teach him how engineering worked.
Martin arrived on a Monday morning carrying a battered ThinkPad and a paper notebook. He was forty-six, had been writing software for twenty-three years, and seemed remarkably unconcerned about making a good first impression. While the rest of us were arguing about which AI coding assistant had the better autocomplete, he was trying to find somebody who could explain why our customer data lived in four different databases.
By Wednesday, Kevin had already decided Martin wasn’t going to last.
Kevin was twenty-six, quick with Kotlin, and one of those developers who could turn a vaguely described feature into a working pull request before lunch. He was good, and he knew it. He also had a habit of confusing familiarity with competence, which is an easy mistake when you’ve spent your entire career working with people who use the same tools.
