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Silicon Valley's corporate culture is ageist
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Faddish organisational trends that shut out older workers are in danger of spreading, says Lucy Kellaway.
硅谷科技公司充满20几岁的年轻人，年纪较大的员工都极力融入年轻人的文化，不免让人回想起几十年前女人想要融入男权社会的情景。甚至硅谷之外的各企业也都尽力将办公场所装饰的童趣盎然，年长员工们如果不堪其扰可以选择忽视。但是，在大力推崇讨论型组织结构的企业文化中，企业需要的是完全信奉此文化并践行 的信徒，有点愤世嫉俗的老年人将无话可说。
相关词汇
ageist n. 年龄歧视
syringe full of chemicals n. 充满化学物质的注射器
entrepreneurial spirit n. 企业家精神
unmitigated horror n. 极度恐怖
biggity adj 傲慢的
短语句子
The penny must drop. 此事必须明确。
参考文本
Tech companies in silicon valley are ageist. The median age of workers in Facebook and Linkdin is 29. At google, it's all of 30. Young people are just smarter, as Mark Zuckerberg is supposed to have said. And even they're smarter, they're certainly cheaper. There're a lot of stories of tragic people in their 40's or 50's buying hoodies, and boaning up (?) on superheros before they pound the virtual pavements in search of a job. Some eventually get hired, but most appear not to. It all reminds me of the things women have been doing for decades trying to fit in a male world, wearing trousers suits and taking out golf. Only this time, it's worse.
San Fransico has become a hot spot for boal talks with tech workers in even their late 20s and 30s seeking to inject their faces with staff that render them expressionless to fit in with their babyfaced colleagues. Yet there are bigger barriers to older peole working in tech that no one is talking about, and which no hoodie or syringe full of chemicals would take care of. It does nothing to do with any prejudice that the over 40s are slow at mastering technology , or that they're lack of entrepreneurial spirit. Instead, the barrier is the very thing that these companies have been praised for, the new organisational structure.
I've been reading the Conversational Firm by Katherine Turkle, a sociologist MIT, who's spending months infiltrating something she calls Teco, a rapidly growing software company in US. It's chucked out the old ways of working, and arraged itself on more open, unhierarchical lines. It's the product of the socially networked age in which people communicate within companies in quite different ways. The result, says Ms Turkle, is an organization built around conversation. So far, so good. People at my age are all in favor of conversation, only not of this variety.
The book starts with the glowing description of "hack night" at Teco. Hundreds of employees assemble in a hall at the company HQ. The evening begins with a call for anyone with an idea to tell the audience what it is. Then each idea is assigned to a part of the room. And as music is pumped up, everyone moves around to discuss whatever idea appeals to them. There is beer, pizza, and a lot of talk. It goes on for hours. At about 9 pm, everyone goes home. At Teco, they love "hack night". But they would, because the median age of their 600 staff is 26. I view an evening like this is unmitigated horror, not because I think it couldn't work or there's no fruit of discussion that could ever result. It simple would not work with me as a part of it, as I'm at least two decades too old.
Teco calls it "controlled chaos". But I'm anti-chaos of any sort. On the grounds it's chaotic, and therefore there's less efficient way of organizing than something more structured. Worse, the very idea of "hack night" offends me, because like most people at my age, I'm a cynic. Traditional organizations can tolerate moderate amounts of cynicism, but this new company functions only when everyone is a true believer.
The more companies muddle themselves around this sort of conversation, the more my generation will be locked out, even if the young bosses stop saying outrageously ageist things, and see some sense in trying to hire a few older people. At some point, the penny must drop, even with the most biggity 20-some billionaire, that age discrimination is not just illegal or unfair, but is also stupid. When older customers are the one who spend most of the money, need to keep almost business going, not having them in your work force makes no sense.
What worries me most is that these organisational ideas abound to escape from Silicon Valley before long, as it's the way of these things. The infantile offices decor with primary colors and bean bags was invented in California but as long since migrated. So now the frumpy businesses all over the world have offices that looked like kindergartens. This is regrettable but not a disaster. Older people can simple close their eyes to it. But with the conversational firm, you can't just close your eyes, or ears. It's a structure, philosophy, and way of life. In this conversation, people in their 40s, let alone in their 50s or 60s, will have nothing to say.
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