The team looks younger and is actively exposed to some cutting-edge pop culture.
Facebook attaches great importance to youthfulness at the employee level because it needs to capture the demand for young people and social trends, but the current tiktok overseas makes Facebook feel huge pressure, and Facebook continues to launch replica products to stop it, but it still The inability to prevent the growth and threat of tiktok actually proves that if there are more young people, it may not necessarily be able to create products that fit the trend and culture of young people.
Back to China, IT Internet companies’ preference for young people stems from the high intensity of work in the domestic IT industry. Under the 996 mechanism, young people have more physical and energy advantages. Older employees also consume more labor costs. On the one hand, these companies need to reduce labor costs, and on the other hand, they need to free up more space for the younger generation. This is determined by the corporate benefit mechanism.
Secondly, the Internet industry is changing too quickly, and IT companies tend to focus on application innovation instead of innovation at the underlying infrastructure, systems, systems, chips, etc., and the research direction of application innovation is more about how to study young People’s preferences and trends, young people understand young people better, without burdens, and full of energy. For new things and new trends, whoever has the first mover advantage often becomes the standard.
And application innovation is closer to money, even more short, flat and fast, low technical threshold, more demanding talent For beginners.
Someone pointedly pointed out that the prejudice against senior employees in the technology and Internet industry is due to the fact that the work these employees are engaged in has not completely escaped the labor-intensive nature.
In fact, this is a development misunderstanding and short-sighted strategy of the industry. Looking at this phenomenon from a higher level, it may be a major obstacle to the industry’s basic underlying scientific research innovation, technological upgrading and inheritance.
Why do IT companies need to have an environment that can accommodate 35-year-old employees?
Some people say that there is no way, because in China, chips and operating systems are related to the basic bottom of the Internet. The framework and operating system that everyone uses are basically foreign. The basic framework and the bottom of the system are innovative, domestic IT companies Not to mention it.
But need to knowThe truth is, who made the mobile phone and PC operating systems we commonly use is an older programmer from abroad.
From the perspective of the entire technology industry, if there is a general lack of a corporate environment that can accommodate employees over the age of 35, it is actually not conducive to the deep innovation and technological iteration of the entire technology industry.
According to a business management expert, a common phenomenon in domestic companies is that management has excessive salary and rights, which directly leads to a large number of senior technical personnel turning to management, so the time used to research technology is used To force and pull resources for the team, which directly leads to the interruption of the original technology research and development. When a new wave of technology comes, because it is unable to update its technology system in time, it is forced to switch careers. This is the middle management trap. .
If R&D technical talents can only transfer to management positions after the age of 35, if more and more companies dismiss old employees with skills and industry experience for a short-term lower cost of talents, this will bring The negative effects are: First, the company’s technological continuity upward trend and R&D experience are interrupted. This is far from being able to make up for a young man with a lower cost. Second: The underlying fundamental shortcomings of a company or industry cannot be resolved for a long time and are subject to long-term constraints.
In fact, whether it is the design field, the marketing field, the basic scientific research and the underlying innovation field, the product field, etc., in fact, it needs long-term continuous breakthroughs and iterations to promote this professional field to a new stage.
Relatively speaking, Silicon Valley is a place that emphasizes inclusive and open values. In Silicon Valley IT companies, although younger generation is also common, many people over 40 still have room for development and survival, even senior grassroots programmers It is also a common phenomenon.
For example, James Gosling, the 64-year-old father of Java, once recalled on Facebook. When he went to seek a new job, he was told by the other party: “Although we are not willing to recruit programmers of your age, we can treat you Special considerations. “Willing to give a 64-year-old programmer with skills, experience and ability the opportunity, this is actually an inclusive and open value.
Preferential treatment of middle-aged workplace talents, so that experienced and skilled 35-year-old + employees can get to the next level, in fact, can form a more benign talent promotion mechanism and incentive mechanism, and play a real role in promoting the continuous progress of the industry. Those 35+ talents with core competitiveness are even the key to building a moat for a company. This is actually the programming and technological innovation at the bottom of the Silicon Valley foundation. Power source spring.
For example, many of the mainstream programming languages used by major IT companies are created by foreign programmers after the age of 35 or even older——
James Gosling, the father of Java, was 40 years old when he created Java. At present, the most mainstream Python was created by Guido van Rossum at the age of 35. Bjarne Stroustrup created C++ at the age of 35. In 2009, Ken Thompson invented the Go language at the age of 66 and Rob Pike, 53. The author of webpack created the world’s most popular packaging tool in his forties, and the core developers of vscode are in their 60s.
Compared to many technology companies pursuing younger age, Microsoft has announced that the average age of its employees has reached 38 years old, but the market value of Microsoft, which has a majority of middle-aged people, has risen in recent years, and now has a market value of US$1.6 trillion, second only to Apple. Lars Bondelind, vice president of Huawei’s wireless marketing, also said in an interview that the company has always been hindered by its young and inexperienced employees.
These cases are reminding us that in order to reduce labor costs, a technology company blindly eliminates 35-year-old employees or is short-sighted, and those who have accumulated a lot of talents, it can often bring experience accumulation and explosive points. At the age of 35 to 40, this is the time when employees in the workplace are the most mature and have a deeper understanding of industry trends. If they are technology research and development employees, they can often bring real breakthroughs to a company’s key technological breakthroughs. Help, this is not something young new employees can replace.
What are the negative effects of the 35-year-old workplace anxiety on the company?
Enterprises blindly pursue rejuvenation, and then train young people to become screws. Whoever leaves is the same. The negative social effects of 35+ employees who resign and face the risk of unemployment are very large.
First, it hinders the upswing of talents with real accumulation, experience and qualifications, and causes many middle-aged talents with stamina to be buried. The breakthroughs and innovations of technical talents in basic scientific research are emphasized from quantitative changes to qualitative changes. Accumulation, if the age of 35 is the threshold of a workplace, it may cause a gap in technology and R&D.
Here are the views of two programmers. Programmer A said that the various workarounds in the underlying code have historical origins. Old employees are relatively more familiar with them. Even if they jump out of the technical layer, they have connections with other groups, and their understanding of company politics.Workers must also have a deeper understanding of company strategy.
Coder B, who has worked overseas, also mentioned that the people in my company who wrote JDK are quite old, and many of them have skipped from Sun. Regarding the bottom layer and api design, the experience of this group of people is so much higher than that of the novices. I don’t know where it is. Do you make the jdk written by the novice work overtime convincing? For some core parts of technology, the value of veterans is much greater. However, many domestic companies, including big factories, insist on ethics and are unwilling to make wheels, so they don’t need too many veterans.
Secondly, it makes young people impatient to sink into scientific research and technology, and prefer to make quick money in a short time. People no longer focus on long-term career planning and improvement, but instead think about 10 In many years of working life, how to find a shortcut for myself when I was young, and find a stable back road after 35 years old.
Riding a donkey to find horses, frequent job-hopping phenomena may become the norm, and workplace anxiety will become more common, which leads to a decline in workplace stability and employee loyalty, which is important for the company’s technology inheritance and long-term strategy implementation Extremely unfavorable.
As we all know, Japanese companies have a culture of lifetime employment. Why Japan has so many outstanding achievements in many high-tech industrialized fields? Its craftsmanship and product quality are praised by the world. This is actually related to Japan’s corporate culture of lifetime employment, which can have technology and experience. The accumulated talents are bound within the enterprise for a long time, and the accumulation and inheritance brought about by the help to the enterprise are related to technological upgrading and breakthroughs.
Why do you say that technology companies should retain talents over 35?
We know that the era of 5G and AI is an era driven by technology and underlying scientific research. It requires a large number of technical talents, and extreme paranoia towards rejuvenation can easily lead to a large number of technical talents beyond the 35-year-old age limit not being reused. Or be discarded and delineated by age, it is easy to miss some Key talents, and miss some key talents, It may also mean missing some key opportunities for transformation and upgrading.
Just as some employees in the technology industry have told the media that they have accepted the industry’s preference for young people, but they are worried that (this trend) will go to extremes, especially in areas such as artificial intelligence. Because of aIt takes ten or even twenty years for programmers to sink into a technical field.
Because with the development of big data, artificial intelligence and other technologies, the career life cycle of programmers will continue to be extended in the future, which is a big development trend.
Looking at the trend of the industrial Internet again, with the gradual advancement of the industrial structure, a large number of traditional industry companies in the future will also need professional software R&D talents. The integration of traditional industries and the Internet, and the trend of data and technology will be in all walks of life. It is a trend that the demand for technical talents has increased, and the target user groups have changed.
The C-end of the Internet is facing young consumers, so it is natural to think about the psychology of young people, but for the B-end and the industrial end, it needs to face the enterprise customer group, and it needs to consider the needs of the enterprise. It has higher requirements for technology and strategic vision. Type resources and talents play a decisive role in the future of a company.
In many countries, obvious age discrimination is illegal, and some technology companies’ excessive preference for youth is actually entering a development misunderstanding that only seeks short-term application-driven development.
Because, from a short-term demand orientation of Internet products, it seems that there are more young employees. When facing the new needs and changes of the C-side, the response should be more agile and fast, and the understanding of young people’s needs should be better. It is difficult for older people to understand products and young people’s ideas, which is actually a kind of prejudice.
We know that Zhang Xiaolong was already middle-aged when he took out WeChat. Jack Ma experienced many failures before the age of 35, and only founded Ali after 35. Huang Zheng founded Pinduoduo at the age of 35. When Wang Xing was 35, he promoted Meituan and Dianping, Meituan’s layout has become more robust, and it has grown all the way. Wang Xing also ushered in a turning point in his career this year.
35 years old is actually a period when a person’s experience, experience, strategic vision, and mental maturity and stability have reached the best stage. At this stage, they often have their own family and are more willing to pursue a stable rise. The golden age of fighting for careers, but setting a threshold for the age of 35 is not good for the technology and Internet industry, for basic scientific research, and even for the long-term development of various industries, talent reserves, and technology upgrades.
And from one lineFrom the perspective of the height of the industry and the long-term perspective, too much respect for a younger Internet culture is actually not conducive to the stability and better continuation of the basic scientific research direction of the entire IT industry. Many resources and capital are pursuing application-level innovation. Pursue the application of explosive models, quickly expand the market, and capital can quickly move in and out of arbitrage, but this has also led to long-term constraints on the underlying framework and core technology that require long-term technical polishing and iteration and experience inheritance. This may be worth the excessive pursuit of youth in China IT companySihao good reflection.