Vivek Wadhwa. Silicon Valley’s Darkest Secret: It’s All About Age. N.p., 28 Aug. 2010. Web.

Vivek Wadhwa is a Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School, who constructed an article claiming “the harsh reality is that in the tech world, companies prefer to hire young, inexperienced, engineers”(pp.2). In order to support his claim the author states how hiring younger people offers a lower opportunity cost than hiring older people. “The young understand new technologies better than the old do, and are like a clean slate: they will rapidly learn the latest coding methods and techniques, and they don’t carry any “technology baggage”(pp.3). The author offers the previous statement, but he doesn’t offer a link, another credible source, or knowledge through personal experience. This makes the reader question whether the information is credible or not.

He then cites a book written by Clair Brown and Greg Liden that analyzes Bureau of Labor Statistics and census data for semiconductor industry, which concluded that the salary of individuals age 40 and up decreased despite their level of education. He links this information to the details of software/industry worker, but doesn’t offer the numbers of these individuals. To conclude, the author tries to offer advice to older workers suggesting that they “move up the ladder” and “keep their skills current”.

This source is not useful at all. The author offers claims that have no evidence behind them. The title of the article is misleading for the reader, because it gives the name of a well-known company but the author doesn’t speak much about the company in his article. The author has no credibility. I was not able to find how the author could be link to the technology in any way. He is also apart of many research teams, but this article does not show that great research was done.