硅谷式歧視：中年白人也遭罪

Palmer Luckey is the founder of Oculus VR， a start-up that Facebook bought for $2 billion. He is 21 years old. His company makes virtualreality headsets， which are marketed primarily to gamers. In fact， several Oculus staffers are people Luckey met in online-gaming forums when he was a teenager. On the “Careers” section of Oculus’site， large 1）candid photos 2）depict what one can only assume is the staff. They are overwhelmingly male. They are overwhelmingly white. And yes， a few of them are wearing hoodies. In a statement at the bottom of the page， Oculus 3）avers it is“governed on the basis of merit， competence and qualifications，” and its hiring decisions are not influenced by race， gender， or age.

It’s been a full decade since Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook and launched a thousand breathless trend stories about the code-fluent， postadolescent masses 4）flocking to Silicon Valley to change the world in Adidas 5）slip-on 6）sandals. But this youthful uniformity， once considered a feature， has become a bug. Tech， the The New York Times confirmed， has a “youth problem.” Writes former Facebook staffer Kate Losse， “Silicon Valley 7）fetishizes a particular type of engineer—young， male， awkward， unattached.” Or， as the New Republic put it， the tech industry’s “brutal ageism”means that if you don’t fit the 8）archetype—say， you’re over 35 and only wear hoodies when you’re exercising and have a few kids and a mortgage—you have to work twice as hard to get ahead. They’re stressed out and 9）ostracized by the“culture，” worried about their wardrobe choices， wondering if they should 10）freshen up with some subtle 11）plastic surgery， and struggling all the while to downplay their family lives.

While I 12）empathize， I found myself stifling a yawn as I read the Botoxed bros’ tales of woe. I’ve heard all of these stories before. It’s just that the storytellers are usually women.

If you think putting on a hoodie is rough， I wanted to tell these guys， try finding the line between workwear that’s not too sexy but also not too 13）schoolmarmish. If you’ve reluctantly taken up gaming in order to bond with your co-workers， now you know what it was like for women who learned to golf so they could meet male clients on the course. And ask any woman who’s ever huddled in her office hooked up to a breast pump： It’s not always so easy to be casual about the fact that you’ve got kids or the fact that you’re different. （Most of this stuff goes doubly and triply for people of color， gay people and those with disabilities.） Welcome， men， to the world of being hyperaware of how you’re perceived， every moment of every workday.

Older men in tech are discovering the unseen work that women and people of color have done for decades. Fitting in is hard work—an additional， invisible task on the daily to-do list.“I had a really hard time getting used to the culture， the 14）aggressive communication on pull requests and how little the men I worked with respected and valued my opinion，” Julie Horvath， a 15）whistle-blowing former employee of the programming network GitHub， told 16）TechCrunch. For most of recent history， we’ve made it women’s responsibility to fit in. Despite the prevalence of equal-opportunity disclaimers， actual corporate culture isn’t changing fast enough （or at all）， so it’s on women to figure out how to succeed in workplaces that are not overtly sexist but still quite alienating. Think that sounds retro？ In another article， The Times offered some time-honored advice to women： “Moving Past Gender Barriers to Negotiate a Raise.”

Rather than offering tips to older male 17）entrepreneurs， the chroniclers of Silicon Valley ageism make a case that the industry is what needs to change. The tech world， which counts innovation and creativity among its core values， has created a culture of unparalleled uniformity. The appearance of daring （look—that co-founder is so young he doesn’t even need to shave every day！） has proved more alluring than actual diversity of background and experience. And this casual discrimination has been bad for business. Both pieces point out that consumers lose as a result of the industry’s narrow view of who’s got good ideas. The Times points out that Silicon Valley is missing all sorts of opportunities in the hardware sector because software is sexier to young entrepreneurs.

When it’s men who are 18）confronted by biases， we look at the bigger system. When women are， we put the 19）onus on them to get ahead. And when it’s people of color facing bias？ Well， that story is so familiar it barely makes headlines anymore. Journalists are paying attention to ageism in tech because it’s a new story that older white men， traditionally a very powerful 20）demographic in the white-collar world， are struggling with how to succeed in a collarless culture that claims to reward merit but rejects them due to factors beyond their control.

Maybe Silicon Valley has 21）inadvertently produced an innovation here： It’s“disrupted” discrimination， to use the industry 22）parlance. The tech-ageism stories， with their focus on culture rather than explicit policies， provide a new way of seeing the nowfamiliar stories about Silicon Valley sexism—and indeed， general workplace sexism， too. In most cases， companies aren’t actively alienating women. They’re rewarding people who match their deep-seated archetype of what “successful” looks like.

That’s a difficult thing to undo with an equal-opportunity hiring policy. Just ask the shocking number of gay people who are still in the closet at companies that have received awards for their 23）LGBT-friendly policies. Or the women who dread telling their supervisors that they’re pregnant. Or take a look at the Oculus recruiting page and compare the text with the photos. Maybe now that a major industry is excluding a traditionally powerful group （older white men）， it will be easier to recognize that other groups’ failure to break into the highest ranks of corporate and political power isn’t a result of personal shortcomings or lack of ambition—it’s a cultural problem.

帕爾默·勒奇是Oculus VR公司的創始人，這家新興公司被臉譜網以20億美金收購。勒奇年僅21歲。他的公司主要制造虛擬現實耳機，主要針對游戲玩家市場。事實上，該公司的好幾名員工都是勒奇在少年時代從網游論壇里結識到的。在Oculus網站的招聘板塊，掛著大量的員工日常照片，讓人印象深刻。他們絕大多數都是男性，絕大多數都是白人。沒錯，其中有些穿著連帽衫。在頁面底部的說明文字中，Oculus極力聲明他們的用人方針是“以個人優點、勝任能力和任職資格為基本原則”，聘任決定與種族、性別或年齡無關。

自從馬克·扎克伯格創立臉譜網，已過去了整整十載。十年里，由他引發的讓人咋舌的傳奇故事一個接一個地上演，無數精通編碼的后青春期少年穿著阿迪達斯便鞋成群結隊地涌到硅谷去改變世界。但這種青春的一致性，一旦被定型為特征，就會產生問題。《紐約時報》證實了這種“青春問題”的存在。一位叫凱特·羅斯的臉譜網前職員寫道：“硅谷盲目崇拜一種特定類型的程序員——年輕、外表笨拙的單身男性。”或者，如《新共和》雜志所言，科技行業“野蠻的年齡歧視”意味著如果你不符合這種原型——譬如說，你超過35歲，只在運動時才穿連帽衫，有孩子和房貸——那你就需要加倍地努力才可以獲得成功。他們備受壓力，被這種“文化”排擠，擔心自己的穿衣選擇，考慮是否需要來些微整形以煥然一新，同時還努力輕描淡寫自己的家庭生活。

當讀到打肉毒桿菌的兄弟們的悲慘故事時，雖然我同情他們，但我也感到無聊乏味。……