The Young Executive Age

Ever since I became part of a young, vibrant Silicon Valley company I can't help but notice the average age of an executive....In most cases, its between 32 and 37....Wow thats young!

Going the traditional route in a bank, consumer products company or a Dell/Microsoft of the world you would be lucky if you have paid your dues by your lates 20s and by 30 you are a manager of some sort. By 40 you could go 2-3 layers higher in the pyramid and eventually you could possibly be an executive anytime between 42 and 52. In the our super speed technology backed global economy this picture is changing drastically. The fastest way to name, fame and the $$$ is to get into the right startup at the right time. So you are 27 and a founding member in a startup that skyrockets..You are set for life..If you do well you will pimp a ride on the startup's success wave and there you will be the gung-ho, ever so energetic, flippant, non-experienced, jeans-clad, yippie executive of a generation next company! No-no its not a done deal and there is no single shot to success!! And yes when your startup blows out of proportion and you realize you don't have the much needed experience or process setup to handle a very large organization you will indeed go out there and hire some 50 year old ready to become hippie-yippie experienced execs to help you do your job.....That's just in the interim till you can learn from them how to do your job better...:)

Some very young, highly respected execs I try to look up to:

Forget about Sergey and Larry. We all know their success story...Lets read about the young whiz-kids who got lucky: Salar, Susan and Marissa from the early founding gang; not to mention the newcomers: Omid, Miriam, Sukhinder and Nikesh!
http://www.google.com/corporate/execs.html


In essence, with time people and kids grow smarter and acquire the knowledge much faster than their predecessors did...This is plain Darwinism at work! Did you hear of the record breaking 3 year old who created his own website yeah using html....:)..Blows my mind...At 3 I think all I could do was eat, poop and sleep :)