Move over racial and gender bias, let's talk about ageism

The average employee for Facebook and LinkedIn is under 30, while icons like IBM and HP go older

There's a lot of talk about discrimination in tech, when it comes to either racial or gender bias. Some are working to correct this. Yet, there's another form of discrimination that goes on, and I don't see anyone really working to fix it. That would be ageism. 

It's no secret that it's harder to get a job in any industry past a certain age, thanks to higher salaries and, let's face it, increased likelihood of high medical payouts on their insurance. This is especially true in tech, where youth is seemingly valued over, well, just about everything else.

Over the weekend Business Insider put out a chart showing the average age of employees at a slew of different Silicon Valley companies. And it found that, often times, the younger the company, the younger the workers - which seems to make sense.

Three companies have a median age that is under 30. The youngest was at Facebook, with an average age of 29. This is a company that is 11 years old and has a CEO that is 31, so maybe it's no surprise. LinkedIn and Salesforce both had average ages of 29. LinkedIn is 12, and SalesForce is 16 years old.

None of these companies are super new, like a Snapchat or a Slack, but they are young when compared to others in tech, which have been around longer than my grandparents. 

So why won't these companies hire old? Well, that's tough to guage, though bias probably has something to do with it. Take this quote from Mark Zuckerberg at Stanford back in 2007: "Young people are just smarter,"

There is also a generational gap, as evidenced by this rant from Mark Duffy, aka "the oldest BuzzFeed employee," back in 2013. 

"I am old enough to be the father of nearly every other editorial employee. And, these whiz-kids completely baffle me, daily. I am in a constant state of bafflement at BF HQ. IN fact, I’ve never been more confused, day-in and day-out, in my life. I am not being hyperbolic, for once," he wrote.

The five companies with the oldest average worker are Cisco, average age 35; Dell; average age 37; IBM and Oracle, average age 38; and Hewlett Packard, average age 39.

Now look at how old those companies are: Cisco and Dell are both 31 years old; IBM has been around since 1911, and is 104 years old; Oracle is 38; and Hewlett Packard is 76. It's not hard to make the correlation that older companies have older workers.

It makes sense, if you think about it, since those are the company that likely to have people who have been working at these companies for literally decades, much longer than some of the younger companies have even existed.

There is one company that seems to break this mold, and it's Apple. Apple is not a young company; it was founded in 1976, or 39 years ago. Yet, it has workers whose average age is 31. That is the same as Amazon and Yahoo, both 21 year old companies, and Tesla, which is only 12 years old.  

You might see Apple has the creepy guy who refuses to grow up, and still tries to hang out with the kids at the local high school (flashes of Dazed and Confused), but I'd rather see it as a company that has successfully stayed ahead of the curve and managed to stay hip.

It's kind of amazing that a company approaching middle age still manages to seem cool to all the kids. That is, not despite, but because of its younger workforce. 

Of course, there is a downside to going young: In the past couple of years, more Californians have sued for alleged age discrimination than for alleged racism, a lawyer told Business Insider. 

You can see the full chart below:

(Image source: greenbuildermedia.com)