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Comment by julian37 | Hacker News Reader

From the article: "On[e] exception [to non-age discrimination in silicon valley?] is YC, but PG did make clear about the chance of anybody above 35 in one of his essays."

Does anyone know which essay this refers to? A quick google search only brought up [1] which says: "Paul [...] said that while this [young grads fresh out of college] was more common, they fund the full age spectrum."

[1] http://www.cloudave.com/link/at-age-35-mozart-was-dead

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http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html

  The other cutoff, 38, has a lot more play in it. One 
  reason I put it there is that I don't think many people 
  have the physical stamina much past that age. I used to 
  work till 2:00 or 3:00 AM every night, seven days a week. 
  I don't know if I could do that now.

  Also, startups are a big risk financially. If you try 
  something that blows up and leaves you broke at 26, big 
  deal; a lot of 26 year olds are broke. By 38 you can't 
  take so many risks-- especially if you have kids.

Hmm, it's an interesting point. I'm not sure how well it holds up for the historical examples, though. Plenty of people (like Mozart) did lots of things early, but plenty also did lots of things later. Is one the predominant mode? I'm not sure, really. Some examples of people who did their most world-class work in their 40s or later: Descartes' famous works were ages 41-48; Newton's Principia was at age 44; Darwin's magnum opus was at 50; Pasteur discovered pasteurization in his 40s, and did his important work on vaccination in his 50s; Fleming discovered penicillin when he was 47. Of course, there are many examples besides Mozart who did most of their work in their 20s or 30s as well, so a bunch of examples don't really settle it in either direction.

That seems to imply that young people are so awesome that they can be more productive by working crazy long hours (compared to the standard 40 hours work-week).

Somehow, I doubt it. I understand his point, but when I see studies[1] that says that on average, working as little 60 hours a week is less efficient than 40 hours a week on the (not so) long term, I don't see how anyone can be more efficient by working even more than that. Even if they are still young and healthy. Even if they are driven like only messiahs have any right to be.

[1]: http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-pres...

I'm pretty sure Sir Ranulph Fiennes says in one of his books that he preferred candidates for his expeditions who were in their 30s as he found them a lot mentally tougher than younger folks.

I suspect he knows a lot more about how people work under extremes of pressure than most.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranulph_Fiennes

I've always liked a variation of that from Tom Lehrer: "It's people like that who make you realize how little you've accomplished. It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years."

It's 25:

But I don't expect to convince anyone (over 25) to go out and learn Lisp

http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

He convinced me at 29. That's about 4 years ago.

I forgot about this one. I was thinking of the 38 limit for startup. OK back to reading PAIP so I can master lisp by the time I am 50..

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