Silicon Valley's Dirty Little Secret: Age Bias 375
MightyMait writes "With my 40th birthday coming up, seeing this article makes me happy I have a good job (and a little wary of having to find another). From the article: '[T]he start-up ethos extols fresh ideas and young programmers willing to toil through the night. Chief executives in their 20s, led by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, are lionized, in part because of their youth. Many investors state bluntly that they prefer to see people under 40 in charge. Yet the youth worship undercuts another of Silicon Valley's cherished ideals: that anyone smart and driven can get ahead in what the industry likes to think of as an egalitarian culture. To many, it looks like simple age discrimination - and it's affecting people who wouldn't fit any normal definition of old. "I don't think in the outside world, outside tech, anyone in their 40s would think age discrimination was happening to them," says Cliff Palefsky, a San Francisco employment attorney who has fielded age-discrimination inquiries from people in their early 40s. But they feel it in the Bay Area, he said, and it's "100 percent due to the new, young, tech startup mindset."'"
Investor rule of thumb: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Investor rule of thumb: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Secret? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but I didn't notice back then because I was 10 years younger.
Re:young versus old (Score:2, Funny)
I need to practice my singing.
Comment removed (Score:1, Funny)
Secret? We've known this for 35 years (Score:5, Funny)
What secret? IT is and always been age biased. The perfect IT employee is a 24 year old with 15 years experience in a 2 year old technology.
Re:Silicon Valley - as defined by age (Score:4, Funny)
In Silicon valley, when you reached the age of 40 you supposed to have at least 50 millions dollars under you name.
The role that people 40 and above play in Silicon Valley is that of the Angel Investor.
If you are over 40 and still looking for opportunity to toil through the night hacking away - man, you do not belong in the Valley.
I left that place when I was 32 - after I sold my creations (plural) there to the highest bidders
I saw a documentary on Silicon Valley ageism once, it was called "Logan's Run".