This is exactly opposite from my experience. Younger people have more emotional attachment to their social commitments, and whine like children when asked to work a little harder. Usually they are being asked to work a little harder because they blew off coming in at a normal time or aren't serious enough about their work product in the first place (so they estimated wrong how long it would take or how much trouble they'd run into while trying to do something they don't know how to do).
That's okay with me: hey, you're young, why give a shit about your work?
Regardless, the best software development teams in the world are not full of hyperactive goatee'd kids in SOMA: it's middle aged boring people who live in places like Houston. Don't believe me? Ask SEI. Here's a not-too-hyped version of this story:
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.html
> Second, lower pay. There is a plateau which one reaches very quickly with
> respect to salary.
That's a whole different problem. Most managers don't know how to determine the "value" of these people, so they pay "what the market pays" and since in the last few years, all the money was free, changing jobs got you a raise and it dragged everyone up with it.
That's quickly coming to an end, and not too soon, IMHO.
> Third, technical knowledge. While the fundamentals of application
> design are fairly stable, good knowledge of individual technologies
> tends to be rather difficult to keep up with, certainly at the
> bleeding edge.
The real problem is that there is a bleeding edge at all. Everyone seems to have "bright shiny object syndrome" -- if it's new, it MUST be good. Which is usually wrong. So it takes more work and more deadline slipage, and more effeciency gets lost in the translation.
Bleah.
> Fourth, burnout. This is a product of the first three, but certainly
> not to be neglected. IT - at least in consulting, dev and R&D shops -
> is a very stressful, competitive pursuit.
Burnout in this field is no different from anywhere else: if you have false expectations, you're going to crash when you find out how wrong you are. In Kindergarten, I learned that if I run around in circles, flail my arms, and scream with glee, I will eventually get dizzy and fall over.
"What, me cynical?"
/jordan