Some say this youth-culture obsession is a US workplace problem. That may be true. To my way of thinking it's a Sili Valley workplace culture problem. Sili

Some say this youth-culture obsession is a US workplace problem. That may be true. To my way of thinking it's a Sili Valley workplace culture problem. Sili Valley is a high-rent district, and doesn't favor people who need more than minimal housing, unless they've already made it big. Also, Sili Valley is all about the new new things. It will be interesting to see what happens to the present crop of Sili Valley giants in 20 years. What happens when Page, Brin, and Zuckerberg turn 55? What happens when the rapid growth of their companies slows? Maybe they retire and start concerning themselves with scenic easements and other perqs of the hyper-rich. Or maybe they try to keep reinventing themselves and the companies. They may make the same mistake Digital Equipment made: responding to a slowdown with a hiring freeze. Once a hiring freeze is imposed, a company loses access to new people and the ideas they bring. The median age increases by one year for every calendar year that goes by. There's nothing wrong with older folks, but not all of us can be managers. They may make the mistake MSFT made in the first few post-Gates years, and that AAPL is in danger of making now: laurel-resting and inward-turning. One of the problems of measuring age distribution is this: Averages don't mean anything. Many effective orgs have lots and lots of fresh young faces and a dramatically tapering age pyramid. Military services are a case in point: Sure, the median age is 22. That's because they have vast numbers of 19 year olds. But they also have lots of 30 year old captains, 35 year old majors, and even older colonels and generals. I'm a developer who started on Hollerith 80-column punch cards. I'm still doing good work. Others can too. But not in Sili Valley: we have too much sense to jump on the latest js framework.