Weekend rant: the tyranny of Silicon Valley ageism
- Summary:
- Ageism among Silicon Valley VCs will surely stifle innovation right at the time when it is most needed. It's a sure sign of dysfunction.
Over the weekend, Vijay Vijayasankar drew my attention to this sad story about how Silicon Valley appears to be locked into a form of ageism that implicitly denies older innovators access to VC funding. The title says it all: The Brutal Ageism of Tech. Years of experience, plenty of talent, completely obsolete. It makes for grim reading:
Silicon Valley has become one of the most ageist places in America. Tech luminaries who otherwise pride themselves on their dedication to meritocracy don’t think twice about deriding the not-actually-old. “Young people are just smarter,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told an audience at Stanford back in 2007. As I write, the website of ServiceNow, a large Santa Clara–based I.T. services company, features the following advisory in large letters atop its “careers” page: “We Want People Who Have Their Best Work Ahead of Them, Not Behind Them.”
Based on that criteria, apart from Derek, the rest of us on diginomica shouldn't be here. But the reality I discovered in the early days of thinking about diginomica and continue to find today suggests the reverse is true.
We play on the one thing that youth cannot buy - experience and long memories of both success and failure. But we also play on something else: making a dent by doing things differently. That's not something you can put an age limit upon.
None of the hundreds of people I know personally - not a single one - ever brings up age as an issue in discussing the topic of innovation. One person I especially admire is closing in on 70 years and still thinking differently, another is about to celebrate his 60th. One of my personal mentors is 64 and still wanting to make a difference.
More to the point - who would bet against Larry Ellison, CEO Oracle 69, Marc Benioff, CEO Salesforce who celebrates his 50th later this year, Bill McDermott, co-CEO SAP 52, or Richard Branson, CEO Virgin Group 63 who fancies putting tourists into space?
Or Steve Jobs, whose greatest years came when he was well past 40, arguably culminating in his 50s with the iPhone and iPad?
If I look at the world of the creative arts, when was the last time you heard of a painter retiring? Or a great classical musician hanging up his baton? Or Mick Jagger and crew giving up on touring?
Innovation as I understand it knows no boundaries and any attempt to stifle it is a sure sign of a dysfunctional culture. Silicon Valley is just that - dysfunctional.
Images via Smart Metal and SNTA