Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

I've been thinking a lot about recruiting lately. I've worked in high tech since I was a kid, and I've often noticed a tendency toward a kind of ageism.

We never want to hire anybody who is too old. They are assumed to be either too expensive, or they just won't fit in with the young company culture. Yet we also insist on hiring gray haired senior management, because investors expect it.

And we assume that you don't know anything until you graduate from college. Of course we also want to hire younger employees or new graduates because they are cheaper.

But I often think to myself that Bill Gates was a college dropout, Sam Walton only had a grade school education, and Jim Clark has created a few great companies.

It seems that we're far more concerned about age and education than we are about the drive to succeed.