Author: Chen Zheng / > very Many people know that there is a lack of workplace diversity in Silicon Valley. Women and ethnic minorities are not common in large science and technology companies, and racial and gender biased employment discrimination is still an obvious unfair problem. In this environment, a narrow and poisonous white male "brother" culture is also created, and shows a periodic outbreak trend. after a long period of criticism, executives at technology companies have finally begun to notice the lack of diversity, some of which have promised to hire more women, black and Latino employees. These are no doubt a progress, but these advances have not touched the biggest dirty secret of Silicon Valley: rampant, close to impudent age discrimination.
"walking around any hot technology company, you'll find young white men are disproportionate to Asian men," University of Washington computer scientist Ed Lazowska said, "the diversity of employees in the company is important, whether to solve labor needs and opportunities. Equality is to ensure the quality of the final product. "
14 years after the collapse of the Internet bubble, there is an obvious prejudice against old employees in the Silicon Valley. Note that the "old employees" we refer to here are all people older than 30 years old, and they have been mercilessly mocked by the young people of Silicon Valley. In other places, the year 50 may have just begun a new career, but for the technology industry, the only thing that can be determined is that life should be terminated in the middle age. The argument of
is also the consistent idea of the top CEO in the technology industry. When Mark Zuckerberg was only 22 years old, he said something that he remembered: young people are smarter. The child prodigy, who built Facebook, told the audience about his preference for young people at the YC conference held at Stanford University in 2007. If at that time, the youth of Silicon Valley was a kind of showing off capital, now it has become an iron rule.
age discrimination is illegal, but we do not care about
the age discrimination in this workplace is illegal in accordance with the provisions of the Federal Employment Act of the United States 1967. If the employees are older, they will not be promoted or dismissal, and the law will be offended. But it will not be difficult for the technology company's executives to reach a consensus among these executives not to hire anyone over the age of 30 (and of course not more than 40). The naked age discrimination is underway under the eye of the technology media, but no one has reacted.
this situation is not surprising, because the so-called fourth class, known as the public life gatekeeper also wears the same colored glasses. Journalists who work in new media such as Valleywag and Techcrunch are as young as the practitioners of the technology companies they report.
in 2013, there was an article entitled "what is the experience of the oldest employee of BuzzFeed" (subtitle: "I can't keep up with the rhythm of the daily work"). This article comes from a 53 year old BuzzFeed editor who claims that "old is enough to be all the editorial department." The average father is "more than 20 years old". This article reads like a penitent book on the neck of the landlord's neck in the special age of China - "these smart young people have been frustrated every day, in BuzzFeed's headquarters I was in a perplexity and never felt so frustrated in my life." This is the most lamentable self mockery I have read besides the absurd speeches of Stalin.
a few months later, the man who wrote this article was fired by his boss (the boss is 15 years younger than him). "This has nothing to do with your level of work and what you write. Let's put it this way, it's actually because of the difference in creativity between you and your young colleagues."
it was reported that Google had spent millions of dollars in 2011 to reach a settlement with computer scientist Brian Reid, and Google Corporation fired the 54 year old in 2004. Reid claimed that colleagues at Google were cynical about their age, saying that he was "old" and "Stamina", and his comments were ridiculed by his colleagues as "behind the times". Other companies, such as apple, Facebook and YAHOO, are also controversial when recruiting new people. In 2013, Facebook got into a lawsuit because of a list of new recruits, because it specifically stated that "entering 2007 or 2008 is better."