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Comment by emarcotte | Hacker News Reader

I'm in a very small company. I am the youngest employee. I'm not certain of the exact age difference, but I suspect I'm on the order of 25 years younger than the next youngest employee.

This company was founded by people who all worked at another place and started their own show. They are all doing things they would never have dreamed of doing 3 years ago, let alone 10. There is blogging, talk of twitter, talk of facebook... social media is one of the new favorite words of the president.

I don't think the generation gap really drives the technology change. Sure, young people may be able to change faster, but old people can still get it when it makes sense to.

That said, I wish there were some younger people around... it's hard to relate to their discussions about kids, houses, etc...

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Indeed, I'm the youngest person at this particular office and I dread going to group lunches and having to hear about husbands, kids, mortgage payments, and other stuff I just don't deal with at this point.

The biggest thing for me is having to pretend...this false maturity is tiring. Definitely not a good sign, but yeah. At least, around folks your own age you can let loose a bit.

On the other hand, having older folks around (who are the same ages of my parents in my case), gives me room for lots of great advice about the stuff I don't care about now like kids, houses, cars, etc. from folks that aren't my parents.

It's a balancing act--be sure to keep up with folks your age outside the office. And when you're at work, if you can, catch up with somebody who's like-minded, even if they're older...they're not mutually-exclusive.

I remember thinking this, exactly!

And then I remember a few years later, having to pretend I was still interested in younger peoples' stories about drinking, clubbing, getting high and dating - when I really wasn't at all anymore. Strange - once I loved that stuff and couldn't imagine not loving it... and then it just got boring.

Still later (right now actually) my wife and I have made a big effort to branch out and maintain friendships with people everywhere from a decade younger to a decade older than us. I think it's been a pretty big positive change in our lives fwiw.

...younger peoples' stories about drinking, clubbing, getting high and dating - when I really wasn't at all anymore. Strange - once I loved that stuff and couldn't imagine not loving it... and then it just got boring.

Do you think those things got boring as a result of doing them too much? i.e. do you subscribe to the idea that you can "get it out of your system" while you're young? Or do you think it's more a result of age? Once your friends start getting married, you feel the need to settle down too?

I'm asking because this subject has been on my mind a lot lately. I'm 25 and don't really feel like I've "gotten it out of my system. On the other hand, I feel like I've kind of started down the "settling down" road in such a way that I can't really be 21 again. Any thoughts or words of wisdom?

I can definitely relate to this sentiment. I started working in an office environment at 18, and have been moving up in position exponentially since then. At 22 I'm now in a position where I'm senior (in that I am a developer, and the people "below" me are junior developers) to a few developers. The first 2 companies I worked at were large enterprises (50k+ employees) where i'm sure I was either one of or the youngest working there. Age become a particularly complex issue when I was 19, and working in a lab. Often I would experience age harassment from a QA lead (who was later fired...) Things got a lot easier after I turned 21 though. Still I find it easier to get work done If I ignore the subject of age as much as possible... unless one of my coworkers has discovered my HN username, I do not believe anyone other than HR knows my age at my current company.

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