The Kind of Smarts You Don’t Find in Young People

Arthur C Brooks in The Atlantic:

Silicon valley has a famously youth-dominated culture and economy. According to Business Insider, most employees in the tech industry are in their late 20s. At eBay, for example, the median employee age was 32 in 2017—and eBay is in the older half of the top tech companies. This is a problem for these businesses. Fairly or unfairly, many tech companies with disproportionately young employees and leaders have gone from a shining example of how entrepreneurial capitalism can improve our lives to something that seems unhealthy and even sinister over the past several years. As one tech writer put it, “the world fell out of love with Silicon Valley.”

With each controversy about harmful products, anticompetitive practices, and “bro culture,” my older friends in business look on in amazement at errors they find obvious. And therein lies a solution to the problem: As I argue in my book From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life, companies need to hire more older people into the ranks of their leadership. To foster innovation and success that lasts, America needs more than innovation; it needs wisdom.

More here.