It seems this manager suffers from a highly typical epidemic in the IT (and really many other) fields: older = better
Unfortunately, its really not the whole story and is quite typical of the middle-aged conservative manager.
While older workers may indeed have more experience in whatever specialty in IT they're in, they also suffer from some serious drawbacks.
They cost more. Hey, let's face it, labour is a market, and they're going to be a like a Mac - they'll 'just work out of the box', but they're going to cost a bomb. Continuing with the Mac analogy, they'll be harder for you to get them to work the way YOU want, since they'll have their own strong opinions about how your project should be done, which may or may not be beneficial or in line with what the organisation needs. Thirdly, it is a rare indvidual that decides to keep learning. After 20 years in the same field, most people aren't interested in the newest technology, the newest ways of doing things, and are generally far more conservative about the way things should run, and what tools should be used. This flows even down to their attitudes towards work, which they'll happily sit there doing some ridiculously mindless task without even beginning to think of a smarter or faster way of doing it, because "thats the way it's always been done".
Sure, younger workers have their problems. Lack of experience may mean more mistakes, or they may be beset with (shock! horror!) confidence (perhaps in overdoses in some cases, its true), but the slightly smug tone in the OP suggests that a reevalution of older workers would be more than worthwhile.
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It seems this manager suffers from a highly typical epidemic in the IT (and really many other) fields: older = better Unfortunately, its really not the whole story and is quite typical of the middle-aged conservative manager. While older workers may indeed have more experience in whatever specialty in IT they're in, they also suffer from some serious drawbacks. They cost more. Hey, let's face it, labour is a market, and they're going to be a like a Mac - they'll 'just work out of the box', but they're going to cost a bomb. Continuing with the Mac analogy, they'll be harder for you to get them to work the way YOU want, since they'll have their own strong opinions about how your project should be done, which may or may not be beneficial or in line with what the organisation needs. Thirdly, it is a rare indvidual that decides to keep learning. After 20 years in the same field, most people aren't interested in the newest technology, the newest ways of doing things, and are generally far more conservative about the way things should run, and what tools should be used. This flows even down to their attitudes towards work, which they'll happily sit there doing some ridiculously mindless task without even beginning to think of a smarter or faster way of doing it, because "thats the way it's always been done". Sure, younger workers have their problems. Lack of experience may mean more mistakes, or they may be beset with (shock! horror!) confidence (perhaps in overdoses in some cases, its true), but the slightly smug tone in the OP suggests that a reevalution of older workers would be more than worthwhile.