I feel like their prevalence in tech has decreased in the last 10 years in the places I've worked. They are not allowed to maintain their bad behavior from my experience, or they are drummed out of the organization relatively quickly before they get the opportunity to be indispensable.
The "bitter old timer" doesn't happen as often anymore either, as people generally leave a job before they get too bitter due to the opportunities available.
That's sad because the old timers generally have a lot of wisdom to share. They are usually also the ones at that stage in life where they are willing to mentor someone.
To clarify, I am speaking about seniority at a particular company combined with a bitterness toward that company because they are trapped. I think having older ICs is still incredibly valuable!
Their prevalence has decreased because there are so many other engineers. For every person who was programming in the 1990s, there are at least a hundred that started in the 2010s and many of the former struck it rich and retired. Mentorship can't scale to those numbers.
There may be something to that - I don't think I've met anyone like that in the last 15+ years. Mind you, I might have got better at picking better to people to work with.
I wonder if this correlates in any way with improvements in mental health support (it's not perfect by a long shot, but it is better)
In my professional life I've been called a genius, and I've been called an asshole. I've never intentionally gone out of my way to be either, but it is what it is. A decade or so of struggling to get my points across without being an asshat about it I discovered I have ADHD.
Job security has always come with the ability to really deep dive into the things everyone else had trouble figuring out. Rejection sensitivity dysphoria seems to have been a likely culprit for the asshat side of things - I spent all this time figuring out the answer, and they aren't listening to me, these people are idiots!
With a bit of medication, a lot of self-help reading, and a healthy dose of cognitive behavioural therapy I'm so much better at interacting with people, and as a bonus I no longer have to bulldoze them into realising my ideas/fixes/etc are the better option (when they are, of course!). I've noticed people are no longer starting off on the defensive with their shields up to full whenever I pipe up now.
Just throwing a thought into the ether. I do acknowledge there's probably a lot of wise old timers retiring out of the system causing the decrease, as well as the points you made, but you'd think there'd be a few more new and upcoming greybeards taking their place.
I'm not saying it is for sure related, just wondering if anyone else can see a similar connection in their experiences?
Not trying to diagnose every bitter genius in a one-shot or anything either, just thinking if there is a correlation to former bitters becoming easier to work with after mental health treatments it feels like it should definitely be explored further. In my anecdotal experience the difference has been absolute night and day, work life is so much easier now.
The "bitter old timer" doesn't happen as often anymore either, as people generally leave a job before they get too bitter due to the opportunities available.