Experience counts: Revenge of the old guys
Now that the gold rush has ended -- or at least headed to the islands for a rest -- the target age for Silicon Valley execs has raced past 40. And 50-year-old CEOs are starting to look very attractive.
As for the 25-year-old B-school wonders who are finding themselves jobless, many are facing the prospect of not retrieving their lofty vice-presidential titles (or perks) for a very long time.
Not that I have anything against children as CEOs, mind you. Many successful companies have been built by under-30s over the past five years. And many of those companies deserved to be successful. But I am also reminded that if the wind blows strongly enough, even turkeys can fly. And, boy, have we been through a windstorm.
The end of the gale brings us into a phase I'm calling the "Revenge of the Old Guys." This is when executives who have been biding their time while their children ran amok are once again being handed the reins of power.
I can't cite hard numbers to prove this, but hiring qualifications are shifting toward experience, especially experience in tough markets, and away from raw ideas, youth, and energy. What companies want today are people capable of leading them through so-so or even bad times. And few of those people have newly minted MBAs.
This is also recognition that while the Internet has changed some things, it hasn't come close to changing everything. I have begun thinking of the Internet as a feature to be added to an existing product or business rather than as a new product or business itself.
Just being Internet isn't enough the bring success to more than a handful of companies, and all those spots were taken a long time ago.
So as dot-coms go belly-up in the sudden-death round, their youthful management teams are likely to get a rude awakening as to how their value is perceived.
"I saw a resume from a 25-year-old former marketing vice president," the CEO of a well-funded (and surviving) B2B infrastructure company told me. "He'll be lucky to even be a manager when he finds a new job. Little experience and a bad track record don’t count for much." Especially when someone pushing 40 is doing the hiring, I suspect.
Technology will continue to be an industry built on ideas and energy. And much of that will continue to come from super smart young people. But as we've learned, merely throwing venture dollars at kids isn't a sure path to success. And we should probably consider who's to blame -- the venture capitalists throwing the money or the kids who caught it?
ZDNet News commentator David Coursey is based in Silicon Valley and has covered personal computers, software and the Internet for more than 20 years. He is an industry analyst and creator of several industry conference events. His Web site is www.coursey.com.