Item — HN Reader

From the blog post:

"I want to stress the importance of being young and technical," he stated. If you want to found a successful company, you should only hire young people with technical expertise.

"Young people are just smarter," he said with a straight face. "Why are most chess masters under 30?" he asked. "I don't know," he answered. "Young people just have simpler lives. We may not own a car. We may not have family." In the absence of those distractions, he says, you can focus on big ideologies. He added, "I only own a mattress." Later: "Simplicity in life allows you to focus on what's important."

Isn't age discrimination illegal?

3 comments

As I've gotten older, one thing I've learned is that some thoughts are best kept to yourself (or those you trust), even if they are true. :)

Publicly suggesting that you hire based on age isn't especially brilliant.

In Mark's defense, I thought that he might really be trying to say that younger people are systematically undervalued, and so hiring them is a bargain. (the market has under-priced their work) Of course I'm sure that others think that the opposite is true and that older people are under-priced. Obviously those people should hire the under-priced old people and build a competing social network. :)

I agree. Being a few years older than mark, I actually didn't find myself offended by his comments.

Just as PG said that adulthood is a stage, not an age, I took mark's comments (though quite less elegant), to mean that there's a mindset of youth that helps in starting companies: simple life, willingness to take risks, lack of corruption of the complacency of the workplace, etc.

Maybe I give him too much credit.

If you're soliciting applicants and interviewing and putting people through a "hiring process," yes. If you're only hiring your friends or people you recruit from school or your online contacts, I think it's a lot less well-defined.

Better question -- is he planning to hand the company over to an undergrad when he turns 30?

So social networking is a way to hire only young people without breaking the law?

More generally, it seems that you can use social networking to get around all the antidiscrimination laws.

I guess. Not something I relish being on the far side of 30, but freedom of association being what it is, it seems so.

At the same time, if your customers are people with families and complicated lives, you're in a better position to understand your customers when you're in their shoes.