The Diversity Issue Silicon Valley Isn't Trying To Fix: Age Discrimination (medium.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The tech industry has recognized it isn't as welcoming to women or minorities as it should be, and is loudly taking steps to solve that issue. Major companies are now releasing diversity reports to highlight their efforts. But as Stephen Levy points out, none of them seem interested in doing something about a different diversity issue that's been pervading Silicon Valley for years: age discrimination. He says, "One company, Payscale, does supply some estimates. Looking at its numbers in 2012, Payscale noted, 'The typical tech employee wasn't around for the original release of Star Wars. And as of last year, the average age at Google was 30; at Facebook, 28; LinkedIn, 29, and Apple, 31. In comparison, the average age in more traditional tech industries like data processing or web publishing was almost 10 years higher than Silicon Valley/Internet firms. In my view, age information should be included in those diversity reports, to underline the need for change— and, even more important, those in charge of company cultures should view age diversity as a plus. Right now, that's not happening."

Comments

Culture of irresponsibility

[iamacat]

VW emission cheating scandal would not have happened in a programming team including women and older folks. They would have said "sure this may get us great bonus now, but we might get caught 5 years down the line, and what would that do to our families?". Current business culture rewards short term gains and irresponsibility to customers and shareholders. As computers become more central to immediately life and death tecnologies like IOT and self driving cars, I think the balance will shift.

In the meantime, a great automaker and its thousands of employees are ruined because they didn't put mature, responsible people in charge of a project.