Leslie Laredo published a piece on AdAge today stating that Digital Media Needs Older Professionals
There are many talented and knowledgeable younger people in our industry, but we need many more people to meet the demand of the interactive-advertising industry, and writing off people older than 40 or 50 is a grave error.
But is this really a problem?
I agree that the interactive industry does sway towards a younger crowd, but when I was at the Web 2.0 Expo last month it seemed like people in their late 30’s, 40’s and 50’s were the predominant attendee.
I wonder if this problem is more isolated to the agency space. I have personally seen pretty good age diversity within the industry accounting the fact that it is a relatively new market sector.
What has been your experience? Do you think there is ageism in interactive?
In my office we range from early twenties through to forties. I also tend to find that quite a lot of the job enquiries I get (this time of year I get a lot of enquiries, pity I have no vacancies!) from graduates are from people in their thirties too.
In the Middle East, generally has been and is the young—teen-30.
At my office I’ve gotten inquiries ranging from 19-28 and never above that.
I personally don’t think there’s a problem. I’m not old, nor young, but I’m getting older every day. But I can think of any of my Dad’s friends that would even want my job.
I get a little bugged sometimes when I see reports that try to explain balance issues of race, gender, religion, age, or any of the other multitudes of things that make us all a little different, especially when it’s a passive balance, rather than active.
Active segregation or discrimination definitely needs to be addressed when it can be documented and tracked per incident. If somebody isn’t getting hired because of age, then we need to fix the problem. But when it’s passive, there’s little you can do when a large percentage of a demographic has (as a whole) less interest in a particular type of industry.
I think there’s certainly an advantage for young people throughout the technology sector, and there has been for years. As the industry as a whole matures, that advantage will shrink, but it’s almost definitely there right now.
Consider the New York Times article about the fall of Friendster, where the final diagnosis was that the fatal flaw was the age of the board of directors – almost no one under 55 or something, if I recall correctly. In short, the Times concluded that older folks have their heads buried in the sand and cannot make good decisions in this developing and dynamic industry. Obviously, this is a generalization that is often untrue, but it does speak to how many folks think about age in the industry.
As far as using conferences to gauge this is concerned, it seems to me that many conference-goers are people who have managed to make it to positions where their company is willing to shell out several hundred (or several thousand) dollars. These people are more likely to be older than quite young.
There are plenty of smart people of all ages, genders, socioeconomic backgrounds, and races in the field, and they are more likely to show up at conferences and on blogs. But the masses are probably more likely to be the 20-28 year old white male who will take a job for relatively low pay.
That’s just my hunch.