Am I Too Old for This Sh--stuff?
There's a rumor circulating the internet that Tom Anderson, cofounder of MySpace, has been lying about his age online. TechCrunch and others have been reporting that Mr. Anderson (I can't even type that without thinking of Hugo Weaving) lists his age as 32 when he is in fact... wait for it... 37! The horror!Um, I'm 37. Now, I'm not naive, and I know that, in the internet world, I'm bordering on being a grandpa, but has it really become that bad? Do perfectly respectable 30-something multimillionaires have to lie about their age on their own websites?
In all seriousness, I find this idea a bit alarming. I'm currently involved in a super-secret, web-2.0 sort of project, and the idea that no one over 29 could possibly produce anything of value online has become incredibly pervasive, even outside of Silicon Valley. Now sure, youth has its advantages: you won't catch me working 20-hour days in my friend's garage, for example. Still, I'd like to think I've learned a thing or two between the Ph.D. and a decade in the internet business. Frankly, it's more than a bit ironic that as people are living and working longer, we're discriminating against them at an earlier age.
One piece of advice to my 20-something friends. When the kids who are in high school now and have never known a world without the internet take over, just remember this: karma's a bitch.
Instead of fighting it, I've decided to accept the early geezerdom the world has imposed on me. I'm going to go on Digg and shake my virtual cane at all the "whippersnappers", regaling them with how monitors used to be "as thick as a man's head" and how, in my day, googol was just a really big number and we had to compile our code (and WE LIKED IT!). If you can't beat 'em, join 'em for the early dinner buffet.
Dr. Pete
· Friday, November 2I'm trying to rant here, David; stop interrupting me with your "facts" and "reasonableness" :) You're right; there's definitely a grass-is-greener aspect to this. All in all, I love that the internet has leveled the playing field, and I really do think people should be judged on their merits. I just find this current investor fad a bit irritating. It's especially fun when I have to listen to a 50- or 60-something VC tell me how no one over 30 can possibly have an original idea.
David Mihm
· Friday, November 2That is absolutely laughable. I completely agree that people should be judged entirely on their merits and that the 'Net has leveled the playing field in almost all arenas. Maybe the solution is for us to team up -- I can pitch your idea to investors & after they pony up the cash, we can tell them that it's actually your idea! :)
David LaFerney
· Saturday, November 3Man, you just need to work with it. You could remake yourself into an Andy Rooney type Curmudgeon. BTW, I upgraded my first computer from a 10 MEG to a 200 MEGABYTE hard drive. And it was freakin huge!
Dr. Pete
· Sunday, November 4If I ever start to sound like Andy Rooney on a regular basis, someone please put me out of my misery.
I remember the first 10MB drive we got on my dad's KayPro PC. We couldn't imagine what we'd ever do with all of that space.
Frank C
· Tuesday, November 6Ageism is a significant problem in IT. After being out of work several months last year and being obviously turned down for positions I was qualified for because of my age, I started taking an almost confrontational approach about it. I'd ask point blank, "My age isn't going to be a factor in your hiring decision is it?" That actually worked.
Dr. Pete
· Tuesday, November 6Frank, I have to admit I've been guilty of it myself. When I was responsible for hiring at a start-up, I always had to contend with our relatively young employee-base and the culture that created when hiring. I tried not to let that become ageism, but it was always there below the surface. When a prospect made it clear to me that they enjoyed working in our kind of culture and brought the age issue front and center, it often made me realize I was being superficial and consider a candidate more carefully.
Terry Bleizeffer
· Friday, November 9Good luck on becoming a curmudgeon. I think I'll go in the other direction - I'm going to rewrite my profile and claim that I'm a 9-year-old UX prodigy who designed my first website when I was 4 and wrote my first set of design guidelines ("Top 10 No-Nos in Desine") when I was 6.
Dr. Pete
· Friday, November 9Good call, Terry; by age 11, you could be a product manager at Google with stock options and your parents could retire.
David Mihm
· Friday, November 2Interesting post -- I will say that age-ism still flows both ways in the online world. I've had a couple of interactions with clients where I've been told by people close to the decision that I was not hired because they thought I was too young (24 at the time). VC firms and the like with lots of Web 2.0 experience may see youth as an advantage, but there's still an incredible hesitation when it comes to the population as a whole that if you're fresh out of college you can't possibly have enough experience to know what you're talking about.