I'm not even sure why that's part of the article at all. The piece is originally about dealing with smart jerks and suddenly the author switches to talking about bringing in older employees?

The article is "[a]dapted and excerpted from The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz." Seems like the editors did a clumsy job when combining two sections [1] of Ben's book.

[1] I "looked inside" the book at Amazon. The article is made up of two sections from the book, and rewrites/reorders the paragraphs a bit.

Senior as in age? Or senior as in someone who has the experience?

I interpreted it as the latter... although I live in England and when people mention senior I think of people who has experience.

The paragraph heading said 'Old People.' Particularly poignant for me - my dad is highly experienced but was recently laid off and has been searching for a job in the tech sector for months. Ageism in tech is brutal.

Usually they go hand in hand.

Indeed.

But note well -- the question must be taken seriously!

As I get older I'm finding it harder to distinguish parody from stupidity/ignorance (aka Poe's law).

I started assuming it is stupidity/ignorance unless its April 1 or they are paid to be funny (e.g. comedian, The Onion).

Indeed. Maybe someone just decided to take the most provocative pieces of the book and stitch together an article, and used a data driven HN-baity headline generator program? :-)

Seriously. Even as a young person, that stung.

Yup, should sting for anyone really. Everyone gets older.

Well, he did have a harder time justifying why not to hire older people, compared to drug addicts.

That's what I thought. Makes the j-word seem rather appropriate for the author, ironically.