However, there's a big difference between brilliance, and good judgment.

Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.

When a CEO makes a mistake, there's usually only one strike, and you're out (we won't talk about Steve Jobs, though -that SOB had nine lives). When lower-level managers make mistakes, it's often recoverable.

Until recently, it was fairly common for corporations to be run by folks (usually men, but that's another issue) in their fifties.

These folks had no problems considering older folks on their merits (which often included price). If they discriminated against older folks, it was usually because they didn't want to pay for something. It wasn't really personal (but that doesn't make it any less reprehensible). Younger folks, on the other hand, bring in the younger generation's resentment against their elders, so it is personal.

Many folks think that only younger folks are creative. I'd not argue that youth doesn't have a great deal of creative energy; mostly because they haven't encountered limitations, imposed by things like the laws of physics.

Creativity, however, does not equal results. What SpaceX has done with reusable boosters, is awesome. I do not know the details, but I'll bet the team that developed it was not just a bunch of enthusiastic kids. I'll lay odds there's a lot of well-coiffed grey pompadours in that team.

IBM is in hot water, because they adopted a "cargo cult" mentality, that, if they hired enough younger folks (and got rid of their "olds"), they'd magically transform into a startup unicorn.

I don't think that strategy has actually worked out too well.

Works for me, but I have different ambitions from most folks in the industry.

I've never really wanted to be rich. It would be nice, but it's never been a need.

I do, however, have skills that could make other people rich. They have been so fixated on my gray hair, though, that they never even realized that.