Silicon Valley Goes Gray

from the growing-up dept

Back in the dot com boom days, you could walk around the offices of various dot coms and never see anyone over the age of 30. Older workers were complaining of age discrimination. How quickly things change. These days, companies are looking for older experienced workers, while turning away the young wonder kids from the dot com days. Some are afraid that these older, more conservative workers will kill some of the exciting culture of Silicon Valley. I wouldn't worry so much. I think, in general, you need a good mix of both conservative operational expertise along with visionary thinking and leadership. While the young dot commers may have been occasionally visionary (though, less often than they'd have you think) they were terrible on the operational side of things. Hopefully, some more experienced workers can help build operations that actually do something to make money, while younger workers still help to push the vision forward.
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  • identicon
    Tony Thomas, 31 Jul 2002 @ 2:06am

    Greying Out Silicon Valley

    Your commentry on the need for a mix of experience in dot coms as in all other industries is completley relevant. Having said that I have managed to make a good living for the last 15 years clearing up after the bright young things from one or the other mass manufacture consultancies have been into a company and achieved the single prime objective of say implementing a system, but thrown the company in to dissarray in the process. So much so that these days I tend to get called in first to do the job properly but with less flash and a little slower but far more effectivley.

    There is no reason why unbridled enthusiasm and well founded operational common sense can not work together, even in the same person.

    Regards

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 31 Jul 2002 @ 8:18am

    Are they still complaining?

    Are the older workers still complaining about age discrimination even though the tide is shifting back to the old timers? I guess you need to have half of your life to go by in order to do those tricky operational things like screw with the books and know who to pay off.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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