Youth haven't been conditioned and molded yet by their industries, they're young, stupid and make mistakes and in the process find new ways of doing things. Because they're young they don't have experience nor families to take care of, and thus will take low wages. They don't demand too many benefits, and you can work them like mules. They also flood the market and are over supplied and under demanded. The average game developer is a 31 year old white male. As soon as they start settling down and wanting to have a family they leave the industry. They burn out, and they are replaced.

It's not the "right" way for every company. Valve and other companies do the opposite. But for most of the industry it is a cost of doing business.

I could have chosen to be politically correct or realistic & honest. I chose realistic & honest.

> But for most of the industry it is a cost of doing business.

That's the part that is disconcerting. It's a despicable way to conduct your business.

That's a gross over-generalization of youth. Age alone does not tell you anything about intelligence, experience or the likelihood of making mistakes. There may be a general correlation, but it is not causation. You may have a 20-year-old who's been programming and contributing to open-source projects since he was 10 against a 31-year-old who's been programming since he was 27. Who has more experience? Who's more likely to make mistakes? - Age has nothing to do with it.

You could say people new in the industry haven't been conditioned and molded yet. They're young in the industry and thus make stupid mistakes in the process and in the process find new ways of doing things. That would be far more accurate.

"They burn out"

I think you misspelled "wise up"

Now that Valve has caught on to this technique, other game companies are going to have to step up their game if they want to stay competitive. Working people like mules? Pssht, that's nothing. I suggest they take some advice from advisors of PhD students. Also, I'm willing to provide consulting services if/when I graduate.

Imagine how far a game company could go if it employed only 18 year-olds at minimum wage.

There are laws limiting the amount a teenager can work.

Yes, it's ageist, and so is Valve if they really have been cleaning house of older employees in favor of fresh college-age kids.

But, is that bad?

As ChrisNorstrom's sibling reply points out, companies really do want young workers in technology. They're more up to date on languages and tools. They'll produce more work and dedicate more time when unencumbered by family concerns. They don't have an expectation of or a lifestyle that requires a six-figure salary. Experience is less of a concern in game and entertainment development than in other industries; it doesn't matter so much if a young hotshot clutters up the codebase a bit or reinvents some wheel algorithm, when this game will be shipped and a new one begun within a year. Even bugs stemming from inexperience are less of a concern for Valve than anyone else, when they own the distribution platform that can automatically push patches and updates anytime.

It's also not illegal if the "older" victims are under age 40. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act only forbids age discrimination against workers 40 or older. http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm

Sure, it sucks for the fired workers. Sure, it sounds ruthless and inhumane. And sure, if Valve is blindly firing everybody between age 30 and 40, then they're being dumb, since of course some programmers are still 10x animals at any age. But Valve is not a charity or a government, and is presumably smarter than that. It's a business in mission to make games and money. Every business should be seeking to replace low performers with fresh faces. And in game development, the performance and business value of an employee does bear an inverse correlation with age, so lower performers will skew older.

Your lawyerly response notwithstanding (it's not illegal if they're under 40!), you don't fire someone because they are old. You fire them because they are underperforming, whether they are old or young.

This philosophy is just another extension of the fetishization of youth. Just because someone is young doesn't mean they'll be better than an older employee (and vice versa, of course).

Judge people on their merits and what they actually achieve, not on what their birthday happens to be.

It seems that age is superfluous to your argument.