Why Ageism Never Gets Old

The New Yorker, 2017: "The prejudice is an ancient habit, but new forces—in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and beyond—have restored its youthful vitality.

"In “Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble” (Hachette), Dan Lyons, a fifty-one-year-old Newsweek reporter, gets his first shock when he’s laid off. “They can take your salary and hire five kids right out of college,” he’s told. His second shock occurs when he takes a lower-paying job at a startup called HubSpot, where his boss is a twentysomething named Zack who’s been there a month. Lyons arrives for work in the traditional uniform of a midlife achiever—“gray hair, unstylishly cut; horn-rimmed glasses, button down shirt”—to find himself surrounded by brogrammers in flip-flops who nickname him Grandpa Buzz. His third shock...

The New Yorker, 2017: "The prejudice is an ancient habit, but new forces—in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and beyond—have restored its youthful vitality.

"In “Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble” (Hachette), Dan Lyons, a fifty-one-year-old Newsweek reporter, gets his first shock when he’s laid off. “They can take your salary and hire five kids right out of college,” he’s told. His second shock occurs when he takes a lower-paying job at a startup called HubSpot, where his boss is a twentysomething named Zack who’s been there a month. Lyons arrives for work in the traditional uniform of a midlife achiever—“gray hair, unstylishly cut; horn-rimmed glasses, button down shirt”—to find himself surrounded by brogrammers in flip-flops who nickname him Grandpa Buzz. His third shock is the realization that the tech sector usually tosses people aside at fifty. A few chapters later, he advances the expiration date to forty. A few chapters after that, he’s gone.