When It Comes to Age Bias, Tech Companies Don’t Even Bother to Lie
Let&#x27;s take this in context?  Here&#x27;s what he said in the interview.<p><i>I have a lot of confidence in young people, and I have a lot of confidence in everyone’s ability to do more than they think they can do. I have very high expectations for people, and I push people to reach even higher.</i><p><i>I take these young kids at HubSpot and I give them huge responsibility. Sometimes they mess it up, but more often than not they get it right. I think, at least in the tech world, gray hair and experience are really overrated. I think my gray hair is overrated.</i><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;12&#x2F;06&#x2F;business&#x2F;brian-halligan-chief-of-hubspot-on-the-value-of-naps.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;12&#x2F;06&#x2F;business&#x2F;brian-halligan-ch...</a><p>Maybe I&#x27;ll have a different perspective when I&#x27;m older, but this doesn&#x27;t sound like outrageous age bias to me.  He&#x27;s saying that these &quot;kids&quot; are capable of more than others give them credit for, and that experience is &quot;really overrated&quot;.  That&#x27;s not the same thing as saying that he won&#x27;t hire &quot;old&quot; people, or that given an &quot;old&quot; person whom he thinks will perform better than a young person at the same salary, he&#x27;d prefer the young person.<p>Maybe this CEO really is biased against older people, but the evidence provided is pretty slim.<p>Reading TFA, the author comes across as pretty entitled.  His argument is that older people are better than younger people, and he&#x27;s upset that this CEO doesn&#x27;t get it.<p><i>Over time, most people get better at what they do. They become wiser, calmer, more self-aware. They’ve also put in the 10,000 hours of practice that Malcolm Gladwell says are required to become expert in a skill. Why would companies not want employees who have gained that expertise?</i><p>I dunno why, maybe this CEO is an idiot.  Sounds like a great opportunity to start your own company, hire the people the market is overlooking, and make a fortune.