"Age Discrimination" in Silicon Valley
Superior young people with the most creative minds are all drawn here to Silicon Valley from all over the world. Young people with exceptional abilities which are wasted in their birthplaces are driven by dreams of Silicon Valley. James Proud from London is one of these. Teaching himself programming from age 9, Proud created the music searching site "Gig Locator". Proud is already a big name in the world of technology. Another example is Kevin Rose from California, who at age 27 created a news site ranking the most interesting articles based on reader voting. His site boasts 4 million or more views per day. Then there is Luzuana Bazille, from Bradford in the UK, who created a travel agency which offered unprecedented "activity-based tours". She also started her business at the age of 29.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founding father of Facebook, created FB during his time as a student at Harvard University before it explosively spread around the world. In 2011 at the age of 26 he was introduced as "the 52nd billionaire in the world with estimated total assets of 13.5 billion dollars" by "Forbes" magazine. What does this young wealthy engineer think about "youth" and "generations"? Zuckerberg had this to say. "I want to emphasize the importance of youth and technical ability. Young people are smarter. It is not a coincidence that all chess masters are in their teens.” Based on this, Zuckerberg is obviously denying the maturity and experience that one acquires with age, while glorifying youth. Such ideas are ubiquitous among the young successful people in Silicon Valley. And it also seems that such ideas reflect the reality in Silicon Valley.
With new companies cropping up one after another, Silicon Valley comprises the majority of the America's total amount of new investments. Creating a business here one can have a chance to become a world-class billionaire at a young age. However, most of the successful people in Silicon Valley are young. And the businesses in this region are ruled by ruthless competitiveness. This makes it an All or Nothing world where only a scarce few are winners.
*Information accurate as of time of publication.