cronereport.com

Facebook, the fast-growing company that now boasts the world’s biggest social-networking site, is planning to move from its ad-hoc, five-building “urban campus” in downtown Palo Alto to a nearby property that can accommodate the company’s expanding workforce.

Any such move figures to alter Facebook’s evolving internal culture while raising the average age of the workforce in downtown Palo Alto. More than 500 youthful Facebook employees now work at five buildings in close proximity of each other along University Avenue, frequently strolling between offices.

Imagine this excerpt from the above article with a different demographic.

Any such move figures to alter the company’s all-male internal culture while restoring gender balance to downtown.

Any such move figures to alter the company’s predominantly white, Christian culture while African-Americans and Jews will no longer be so outnumbered downtown.

Too bad we don’t have some sort of law to prohibit discriminating against people based on age. You know, maybe something like this:

SEC. 621. [Section 2]

(a) The Congress hereby finds and declares that-

(1) in the face of rising productivity and affluence, older workers
find themselves disadvantaged in their efforts to retain employment, and
especially to regain employment when displaced from jobs;

(2) the setting of arbitrary age limits regardless of potential for
job performance has become a common practice, and certain otherwise
desirable practices may work to the disadvantage of older persons;

(3) the incidence of unemployment, especially long­term
unemployment with resultant deterioration of skill, morale, and employer
acceptability is, relative to the younger ages, high among older workers;
their numbers are great and growing; and their employment problems grave;

(4) the existence in industries affecting commerce, of arbitrary
discrimination in employment because of age, burdens commerce and the free
flow of goods in commerce.

(b) It is therefore the purpose of this chapter to promote employment of
older persons based on their ability rather than age; to prohibit
arbitrary age discrimination in employment; to help employers and workers
find ways of meeting problems arising from the impact of age on employment.

Oh, right, that. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967. That’s just some throwback to the hippie days that we can ignore, right? The congressmen must have been smoking pot when they wrote that.

Age discrimination is real, and it’s commonplace—perhaps even pervasive. As a recent NY Times article noted,

At the top of the corporate ladder, executive recruiters are routinely told not to seek anyone over 50…In an industry survey, a majority of technology companies candidly said they would not hire anyone over 40.

I myself have decided never to take a “real” job again. It’s tempting sometimes—running my own business is a constant struggle which is on my mind from the moment I wake up in the morning until I finally drop off to sleep at night. But the alternative is, if someone were to hire me, to risk a layoff at 58 or 62 or some other age when starting over may be to daunting a prospect.

Several of my friends have struggled to find work, any work, after being laid off after age 40. One of them—with a master’s degree in international marketing, 20+ years experience in high-tech business development, fluent in French—gave up after years of unemployment, living off his retirement savings, and no health insurance.

He shot himself in the head in a park in Mountain View. Home to Google and about a hundred other high-tech companies that could have used his skills and experience.

When I was still under 40, I worked for a company that, like Facebook, was based in several buildings in downtown Palo Alto. I certainly snickered when my boss called me at home on a Sunday to ask how to send an attachment with an email. On the other hand, he had an office decorated with all the Emmy awards he’d won during his career. So maybe he knew a few things I didn’t.

But it was at that company that the project manager brought in 15 futons so that we could all sleep at the office, where ordering dinner for 10-15 people was a nightly occurrence. I had dinner at a conference table at 10pm with my co-workers many, if not most, nights. The blinding migraines that would wake me up 2-3 nights a week got so bad that I called a lawyer to see if I could claim disability to reduce my hours to no more than 54 a week. I figured I could handle 10 hours a day and 4 more on Saturday, but please, please, I needed some rest.

After all, I was almost 40.