> I read it as saying you should fire someone because of their age. Not stupid, malicious.

One does not get the title of "Staff Engineer" for age.

One also does not get fired for age. One gets fired for sitting on their ass doing virtually nothing. The "Staff Engineers" and above tend to sit on their ass, doing virtually nothing. Any sane company would do well by firing them.

When Google was a young company the idea of someone in engineering with a fat title sitting on his ass doing nothing was not tolerated. That's when Google was doing amazing things, was innovative and actually gave a s!it because every single person in that company wanted to get s!it done. Right now Google is a standard issue sh!t company because its upper echelons are full of people who are just warming their fancy chairs, talk about their amazing work life balance and count the days to their next options package vests so they can take yet another multi-months vacation.