Will the young lead the way?

In the Web's early years, dotcoms seemed to live in a different universe, one full of fantasy and easy money. This land seemed to rewrite old rules, turn business wisdom on its head. And a distinctive culture suited to young people emerged. The office becomes home, with the kitchen at the center of the office. Employees are temporary, but external partners have long-term deals. Newcomers with little business experience get free rein to direct a company's future. The young teach the old.

It's like Alice in Wonderland walking through the looking glass into a world in which everything is reversed, except that in Tomorrowland, the fantasy world of cyberspace, she can't ever walk, she must always run. The speed of change resembles Alice's croquet game, in which everything is alive and moving quickly. Her mallet is a flamingo, the ball is a hedgehog, soldiers bend over to form the hoops, and it is futile to get any of them to stand still. Internet time is said to be seven times faster than ordinary time, but sometimes I wonder if it isn't even faster than that. New companies start faster, acquire earlier, go public sooner, and have their first downturns and layoffs at breathtaking speed, all well before established companies reach the middle of a five-year plan. Dotcoms go from birth to old age (and in many cases, death) before a traditional firm is out of the starting gate on a new strategy.

Because the young are considered the Internet experts, the early days of the dotcom boom showed a bias toward the young and the newcomer over those with long experience in the company or the industry. A Silicon Valley venture capitalist was widely quoted as saying that he wouldn't invest in any Internet company started by anyone over twenty-six. A young founder of a successful Internet consulting company told me that his ideal new hires have a few years of work experience but not more than three. "We want to get them before they are brainwashed by the McKinseys or the Andersons," he said. This bias for youth angers many mature adults. In 1999, young dotcom millionaires became a major topic of conversation among their parents' generation, the baby boomers. Everywhere I went, it seemed, successful professionals - lawyers, physicians, consultants with high billing rates complained that it was unfair that people so young were getting so rich so fast. Instead of feeling satisfied with all they had accomplished, many boomers expressed frustration that they had devoted their work lives to something that seemed to get them nowhere; some wanted to throw over their professions and find a dotcom to join.

Here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, You must run at least twice as fast as that!

Red Queen to Alice, in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass

next page >>>

TATA INFOTECH - TOTAL SOLUTIONS TOTAL COMMITMENT