entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

. . . who will work for less than you would. My pal Steve is a software developer who's been in several interview situations where the choice was between him and someone ten years younger who'll take $20K less per year. He's lost more than a couple of jobs to the kid even though he's vastly more experienced and skillful. I've encountered it myself interviewing for lousy secretarial jobs. And I thought age discrimination wasn't supposed to happen until we were all 50. Of course it's all "penny wise, pound foolish" on the part of the employer -- that sort of sounds like sour grapes, but I think you can at least rest happy knowing that they're making their work harder for themselves by choosing this course of action.