In a short period of time I was writing more code, and doing it several times faster than the older, more experienced programmers.
Hmm ~ !?
Was it because I was being paid "entry level" wage, or something else.
Probably not because this was a government agency and I was actually hired into the shop doing this work at a higher wage than those already there.
On the other hand I was willing to come into work at 2 AM to pick up a report identifying errors in the code, and then immediately fixing those problems and recompiling the job.
That always gave me a day's advantage against the competition.
The other thing was I could stay awake for 2 or 3 days at a whack so I could keep "things" in mind about the programs I was working on.
It was great, and then I noticed that as I celebrated my 29th birthday I didn't particularly like showing up at 2 AM, nor did I care for the all-nighters anyway. I also bought a television and found out about the evening news, the morning weather report, and reruns of Star Trek.
Yeah, all those things, and people I know in the programming racket advise me it's still the same old thing, and the guys who do the night stuff, and get up early, and push, push, push, and keep their minds on every single last itty bitty detail of their projects still get the work.
The others move on into other stuff.
We use young men as soldiers for the same reason ~ even with the UAVs ~ the job does its thing on its own schedule, and the individual has to be able to set aside all worldly concerns and focus.
That stuff gets old though.
Most people work an “8 hour day” If you are working 22 hour days for 3 days at a time, then you are being worked to death.
Just because young people have energy and some salesmen do cocaine is no reason to make it the “norm”.
Everyone works on “spec(ulation)” in some industries as well (you do the first couple of jobs for “free” to see if it works out).
It’s exploitation. Nothing but.
BUT, because of my experience and skill, I'm much less apt to need to pull an all-nighter.
Younger engineers have less ability to understand process interactions, they simply lack the gut experience to see how a minor change can ripple through the entire shop floor and come back to bite them.
They tend to be like little liberals in that regard, they want to "impeach Bush" but can't foresee the immediate consequence of having President Cheney. Unlike liberals, they can be trained out of it!
A smart company has a mix of enthusiasm and experience. Less healthy companies tend to have either a stable of old nags, or young stallions.