Entrepreneurs: Stupid Follows Stupid
by Miki Saxon
It’s always interesting to see young people following in the footsteps of their predecessors.
Even more so when they hotly deny doing it.
But the frosting on the denial cake is that they are following in some of the stupidest footsteps.
Which they are doing in droves.
Last week I wrote how stupid it is to stereotype 80 million millennials.
Before that is was management’s stupidity regarding Gen X.
Age, however, is the biggest stupid and has been for decades.
For Boomers, the breakpoint for when a person became hopeless and valueless was 30; Millennials raised it to 40.
As bad as age discrimination has been in general, it is far worse in tech.
VC Vinod Khosla crystallized and popularized this mindset back in 2011.
“People under 35 are the people who make change happen. People over 45 basically die in terms of new ideas.”
That means you can expect no more creativity from Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Marc Benioff, Parker Harris and Satya Nadella. (For insight to other fields read the article.)
Not to mention that 32 year-old Mark Zukkerberg only has a few good years left.
There are thousands more at all levels, I just picked recognizable people to better illustrate the stupidity.
The difference between when the Boomers did it and now is the notice and action being taken.
This past week, the EEOC joined a probe behind a federal class action lawsuit against Google filed last month, charging that the search giant “engaged in a systematic pattern” of discrimination against applicants over the age of 40. The suit, expanding upon a related case filed earlier this year, cited data from Payscale that placed the median age of Google’s workforce at 29, with a margin of error of 4%. By contrast, the median age for U.S. computer programmers is 43.
Actually, I will probably find it somewhat amusing to watch founders as they try to meet candidate demand for the compensation and perks of the past few years in today’s do-more-with-less/revenue-based-business-model world.
That also goes for many, not all, by a long shot, tech workers who are looking for those same jobs and perks.
So heed the advice I recently gave a founder who took advantage of my standing offer of free help (both my phone number and email are posted on this blog).
He asked how to land a “star” candidate looking for “yesterday’s” compensation and refused to consider anything less.
My advice was to take a pass, refer him to Facebook or Google hire a reality-based programmer who can do the needed job and was sincerely interested in his product and vision.
The only thing he might lose were a few late night bragging rights.
In short, grow up, get smart and hire talent — no matter its age or color or gender.
Flickr image credit: Ben Sutherland
