Yes, it's called ageism. Young and fresh is perceived as better than experienced because some bozo will make the argument that they've been doing software engineering "wrong".
This is definitely true sometimes, but the “wrong” kind of experience can definitely hamper people.
I have a highly skilled senior developer with a desktop app development background who joined our web team, he’s excellent at many tasks but keeps getting tripped up when dealing with state. He logically knows how it works, but his muscle memory when programming is so used to being able to rely on state that it’s hard for him stop letting those concepts leak in and trip him up.
He’s still an amazing asset to the team, but in this case he does have some experience that’s hampering him in a new role.
> He’s still an amazing asset to the team, but in this case he does have some experience that’s hampering him in a new role.
OK, but how much could it possibly "hamper" him if he's still an "amazing asset"? Is it a permanent condition? Or is it just something that you noticed once or twice and made a mental note of?
We all have gaps and shortcomings. Overcoming them is a matter of practice, but if someone is second-guessing and judging every brain-fart, that's not good for anyone.
This was just an example where someone with no experience may have had an advantage. They would have had to learn as well, but wouldn’t be fighting against their muscle memory.
We all have strengths and weaknesses. I was arguing against the concept that this can all be attributed to ageism. That there are types of experience that can hamper you.
Lol, it's web development it's not rocket science. He doesn't need to wait for the next reincarnation cycle before he can be made fresh again to learn Redux.
State management is also a thorn for desktop apps that need to talk to a server. Or even desktop apps that need to use a local data store, and whose UI has effects not stored when saving. E.g. this is why the MVVM pattern exists in WPF (the last desktop platform I worked on). And things like Reactive Extensions.
JS/React in some sense is just using a high level desktop development language, fetch is rpc, and the server is ... the server.
if anything the ageism goes in the other direction IMO - "experienced" commands a salary premium even when their actual skill and useful experience is no better than a fresh grad.
