What good are smarts and energy without judgement? That is where we are today -- a generation of men (mostly) who feel they're the smartest and the best without the years to give them what they truly need.
Without the judgement and perspective that comes with age, and with the hubris we see from much of the tech world (though certainly not only the tech world), we have changed the way our society works and the unintended consequences are killing us.
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Are journalists simply unable to get an interview unless they offer boundless admiration? Amazon and its founder is older than *any* of these companies and they only even started collecting sales tax after they shuttered the last local bookstore.
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Older, yes but wiser, I doubt it.
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Hopefully the NYT's is charging these guys for this PR piece. "You could chalk these statements up to self-interest". Ah, yes if only we could. But we would only be gainsaid by "leadership communication expert" Maureen Taylor. Whose communication "coaching" magically transforms one into a "young idealist" merely "trying to make the world a better place". And that's a good thing! That's a start! After all "OLDER CEO's' also run companies that are bad! (And incidentally, actually produce things of real value) Ah, if only they had children to open their eyes to the bigger picture! It makes one wonder if perhaps Mr. Palihapitiya and company aren't fearing some type of public backlash at best, or some type of litigation coming down the pipe at worst, and have been advised by their legal *coaches* to get out in front of the problem. Perhaps I am just old. Love how the only *hope* is for a new wunderkind to replace the old wunderkind. Hopefully they get their "communications coaches" involved earlier in the game. Is there a word for a PR article masquerading as journalism? I think fake news is already taken. How about Werbung?
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Talk is cheap; we've known that for millenia. It's always tempting to imagine that more volleys of words will produce the answers we need.
Rather, we need more attention to renewable sources of energy, sustainable agriculture, efficient means of transportation and the rest. When we turn our minds seriously to such problems we'll find that bros scarcely out of their teens will not be so much to the fore, and we'll have begun solving all these problems at once.
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Interesting article. What was most striking to me was a picture of the early Facebook founders huddled in front of a screen. Notice the mural behind them? A harbinger of how women were and are still perceived in the tech world. Talk about bro culture...has much changed since 2005?
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I thought the same thing when I saw the mural.
And, yes, it is still very prevalent in the tech industry. Definitely from my experiences as a woman software engineer. It's pervasive in the very culture in most tech companies and departments.
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Gee whiz, the wunderkinds, computer whippersnappers get older too.
So tired of the oo and ahh accolades given to the tech boy (or girl) wonders.
As if they were immortal. They are business people simply making money.
We've given all of them way too much power, money and our undeserved admiration.
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Clearly this is a good trend. The media should acknowledge their part in this catastrophe, too. All too often we’ve seen some reporter breathlessly asking a zit-faced kid who invented a dating app “what does it all MEAN, Mr. Whoever?! Will you run for president?!” We The People also sit, doe-eyed, worshipping instant wealth to the exclusion of honoring hard work and hard-won wisdom. Maybe we all need to grow up a little....
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Was this ghost written by one of these "now-wise-40-year-olds"? I don't buy it. Silicon Valley is still full of bro-dorm offices, male-dominated everything, and motorized skateboards. Innovation is still about making money, looking cool and driving a McLaren. Wake me up when these so-called geniuses solve the rampant drug/homelessness problem, design efficient public transportation and decrease deaths amongst black women giving birth for the first time.
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We are the ones that have created these so called titans.
We elected a government\so called leaders that turned around and enacted policies that allowed collusion, tax inversion and other things that created monopolies. It is now the renewed gilded age of the tech industry.
We can now correct those mistakes by electing in people that would break up these monopolies and fairly tax them proportionate to their actual incomes. That money ( absolutely massive that it would be ) would help with social policy, education and infrastructure spending.
You know, like how it is supposed to work.
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Funky, I completely agree. I am just so frustrated that when Obama had all 3 branches of govt he did nothing to stop this foundational cancer on our country.
I am frustrated that no one calls him out and expresses disgust over the fact that he promised not to be just another politician and then went right on and acted like one.
I am frustrated that people continue to lionize him and treat him like a titan, which will only serve to teach other politicians that they can get away with perpetuating the fraud, too.
Americans can't seem to admit that making money is the number one priority and ultimate measure of success, which is a tragedy for individuals and the country. Making millions of dollars does not always equate to intelligence, and almost never equates to wisdom.
As the late author and influential scholar Joseph Campbell used to say when he met with his students looking for advice about what to do with their lives: "There's something inside you that knows when you're on the beam, or off the beam, and if you get off the beam just to make money, you've lost your life."
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As the late, great Dorothy Parker said, 'If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to'.
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It's not surprising the tech entrepreneurs of yesterday and the industry are maturing. Who would have thought the generation of Woodstock, anti-war, and bra-burners would heavily vote for Trump?
Internet has changed the way we live, but nothing short of a miracle can change what human beings are.
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Too little too late? The horse already out of the barn? All the other platitudes. Imagine if the atom bomb was never invented. It is likely that the radiation from these ever present devices will bring about more cancers as the young have spent years attached. It is unlikely that we will be able to get ahead of the bad actors on social media. They tend to stay one or more steps ahead. The new fake videos that are so real that we won't be able to detect the difference will make it all but impossible to determine truth. AI will bring even more threat to humanity.
Humans tend to run in without much thought for future fallout. It is who we are. And it causes a lot of disruption, some of which can't be reversed. As we see the ocean rising, the planet warming, it is pretty obvious.
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“Tech’s work force remains young — according to PayScale, the median employee at the five largest tech companies is around 30, roughly a decade younger than the median American worker — but the industry’s leaders have gotten older, and are seemingly more attuned to the power they wield.”
The industry’s leaders might be more attuned to the power they wield, but not so attuned that they’re above illegally discriminating against anyone over 40. You don’t have to be too familiar with the tech industry to know that age discrimination is the norm and it’s a rare event to see anyone walking the campus who was born in the 70s. “Young people are just smarter” said Zuckerberg… well maybe or maybe not. But one thing's for certain, young people are cheaper as they’re typically hired before they have things like large mortgages and children. Is it that young people are smarter or that young people are motivated, but also cheaper? Like many things from the tech industry, it’s all in how you spin it.
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There is a reason why tech workforce remains young, but it's not what you think. For example, number of software engineers in the world doubles about every 5 years. So if you are in the industry for 5 years, that means one half of all engineers will be younger than you. At 40, you have been in the industry for 15 years, so about 7/8-ths of all engineers will be younger than you.
I have been a software engineer nearly 40 years, so pretty much everyone is younger than me.
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Agreed. Once you are perceived as over 40 your chances of landing a job diminish to a highly noticeable degree.
At that point you leave out the dates of education and maybe trim some earlier jobs from your resume or leave the dates off to appear younger. Heck, I've known some men who when they find themselves in the market for a new job have dyed their hair to a degree to look younger.
And then we had the recent news about how job ads on Facebook were shown to younger people and not shown to those 40+.
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No doubt the hubris of youth had a lot to do with the blind arrogance of the tech community, but lust for power and greed were significant factors as well, as was techno utopianism. Eric Schmidt, the former chairman of Google, said at a conference in 2012 that the Internet could potentially "fix all the world's problems." He was 57 years old at the time.
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Interesting that the "brotopia" culture isn't referenced. The article only mentions one woman by my count, and interviews none. Couldn't the lack of diversity - gender, racial, and age - be related to the lack of maturity and responsibility? Or do we all just have to wait patiently as "boys will be boys" grow up?
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So relieved that these boys are “growing up”! Now maybe when their moms ask them to clean their rooms, they will!
Oh, and soon, very soon, the boys might let the girls play in the tree-house too, but the girls still can’t touch the PlayStation.
I’m just jealous...
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Silicon valley is a lot larger and more complex than Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter. The valley was named and massively successful before any of those companies were formed. Silicon valley is not populated by young start up billionaires, despite what you'd think by reading the media. There are plenty of large, mature companies led by mature professionals.
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You don't mention any female tech execs in this article which is a mis-representation of the real world. Quoting a female coach is not sufficient.
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Yeah, and maybe the new young millionaire tech leaders could think about maybe lifting a finger to help defend against the tech war that Russia has launched against the democracy that allowed them to get so rich in the first place.
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40 is old? Wait until they realize they are going to live to 100 but they have created a culture where they are not only not welcome for the final 65 years of their lives but considered stupid based solely on their age and sex. These guys are dumb and dumber. They will figure out that age happens, like it or not. Then they will slowly figure out that it beats the alternative. They never should have done what they did when they were younger. They have a lot to apologize for.
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Silicon Valley still has massive discrimination problems - race and gender get most of the ink, but age-ism lurks as a hugely wasteful element - just on the business economics, let alone the law.
When you consider all the uncertainties, lost motion and unnecessary expense implications inherent in the disposable worker culture, it has to be wildly more expensive than investing in the known quantities of the people you already have, but currently heave.
I hope that recognition dawns on these newly maturing execs in their process of "remembering that the whole point was to make the world a better place.” They will do well by doing right by their people.
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