aintitthetruitt

I think this is less an age thing and more of a combined curiosity and systems understanding and thinking thing.

I've noticed the same effect, but the lines it always seems to fall on are if the person fails one (or heaven forbid both) of these: 1) are you curious about how your tools work and how to get better using them? 2) can you hold the mental map of both what you are solving and how your tools work in your head, and explain how information flows.

There is also a dash of: 3) are you willing to try something, even if it has a bit of a screwup risk, just to see what happens?

In college I would go climbing frequently and one of the people I met along the way was a student from Italy that was here for her doctoral. On one trip we were talking about all the things we found beautiful and I made a comment about how much I loved the sound of the romance languages, and how they were so sing-songy to my ear. She then proceeded to talk at length about how she found English so much more interesting because it allowed for expression that just wasn't possible in Italian. Specifically, the nature of English being a pidgin that not only accepts creating new concepts on the fly but almost encourages it means that she can think about things in English that are actually difficult to formulate in her native Italian.

I've since heard interesting comparisons as well from native Mandarin speakers, where there is a certain formulaic piece missing in English that let's them form ideas easier. Interestingly in that case they would describe opposites too where there are certain groupings of ideas that they found easier to form in Mandarin that they had to invent words for in English to get across. But they could do so - invent those words.

I'm a native English speaker and only a third rate French and Spanish speaker, so I have to take this on faith for the most part, but it is interesting to hear that common view across origins.

My son has a Lego police car that came with literal Lego caltrops. They are intentionally designed to sit with a spike pointing upwards no matter how they fall. I can only assume it is the product of many hours of maniacal laughter over in Denmark somewhere.

I work at DL (although not technical team) and can attest that this is attainable for GCP, and we do so on a fairly regular basis. I cannot speak to Azure, but I expect it too is likely.

This is more a function of a low ceiling for government employees than it is anything special about contracting. Like other places it's a race to the bottom for most, with small pockets of exceptional pay for very in demand specialties.