[null and void]

Pretty much. I'd still pull an all-nighter if needed, but I really don't bounce back as quickly as I used to.

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.

[muawiyah]

BTW, I got out of the computer racket and into writing regulations and handbooks. The advantage was I didn't need to pull as many overnighters, but when you write rules you have to remember the beginning, end and middle simultaneously so you can make necessary changes.

Plus, we had abominable time constraints every now and then ~ 10 days to rewrite several hundred pages in a thousand different ways ~ our problem was you couldn't work that with a team of more than about 10 people, and that was barely enough to get things done in that time. Still, more people just slowed it down.

I know several ways to do the overnighters as needed ~ fortunately i'm retired.