alt Hacker News> in my experience people with a software background make much better hardware designers than people with an EE background because they are aware of modern software best practices.
I know them. Especially older folks. Ramming all parts on one huge sheet instead of separation by function. Refusing to use buses. Refusing to insert part numbers into schematics so they can just export BoM directly and writing BoM by hand instead.
Watching these guys is like watching lowest office worker inserting values from Excel into calculator so he can then write the result into same Excel table.
Age has an effect, no matter if it's software or electronics. These types learned their trade once, some decades ago, and keep driving like that.
If you want old dogs to learn new tricks, teach them. No company has the money to spend nor the inclination to even suggest education to their workers. Companies usually consider that a waste of time and money. I don't know why. Probably because "investing" in your work force is considered stupid because they'll fire you the moment a quarterly earnings call looks less than stellar.