The flip side of this is true as well. Ageism is a real problem in our industry. People are just more patient with young college grads and more willing to help them out. As somebody who transitioned to SWE in a big company(FAANG) after a decade of wireless communications research, I found out despite all the processes and supposed practices a big company has in place to onboard people from different backgrounds, you need to rely a lot on your teammates for the tribal knowledge to get anything significant done. And people are far less helpful than they think they are. Often they assume things because in their minds X years of experience means you should already know this stuff. Almost all of it is non technical and specific to the company so you won’t have a way of knowing it beforehand but that consideration is readily given to a fresh grad than an experienced person. Also a lot of the times tenured people will feel insecure/threatened about/by someone else joining at the same level and would constantly point out their shortcomings in order to maintain their place in the hierarchy. Was oblivious to this until I was managing people and saw newer experienced people joining the team face this. Had to coach people to stop them doing this unconsciously.