"If you're over 30, you're a slow old man" – Zuckerberg. He turns 30 tomorrow.

The alleged quote that the submitter put in the title appears to be completely bogus. Is that so? Googling it [1] brings up nothing but this HN page and a few other web pages from today.

If the quote was just made up, then this post manages not only to be asinine linkbait, but fraudulent as well. You don't put made-up horseshit in quotation marks and attribute it to someone.

Apart from that, what an unredeemably stupid thread. This is a shining (or should I say a steaming) example of what we don't want on Hacker News. That ought to be obvious! If it isn't obvious to you, please pay closer attention, and kindly don't post anything until it is.

Now off to bed without any supper, all of you.

1. https://www.google.com/search?q=zuckerberg+"slow+old+man"

So it doesn't surprise me that he said that to a room full of young wantrepreneurs ready to kill themselves working 100-hour weeks in hopes of an acquihire (probably by Facebook). It also doesn't surprise me that he blew $100 million on the good cause of helping his home school district -- looked great in the press and continued the narrative he wanted for himself. It manipulates large numbers of people in a way he wants them manipulated. This is his medium.

I wish him the best -- and that maybe he learns a little bit. I know that probably sounds condescending, but Zuck is at a huge disadvantage compared to the rest of us, similar to that disadvantage faced by rockstars: he's at the top of his game. The job has to be a killer, but as far as social feedback goes, he's unlikely to screw it up. When I was 25, if I went in and told my boss he was an idiot, I would lose my job. People would ask me what my problem was, and I'd have a good chance to do some introspection. He has no similar natural social limitations. So he can keep on saying and doing things like this without the opportunity for introspection most of us would have.

That sucks.

EDIT: Removed the first clause, which seemed to be giving some people problems.

Now I just admit that I am probably clueless and just try to make the best decision with what I know now. It's helped me to be a lot less cocky.

Because chess is more important than family.

I love this place, but will not deny that the Bay Area tech community's hubris is at astronomical levels.

...I'm just glad we're done talking about splitting California into smaller states.

http://examinedexistence.com//wp-content/uploads/2013/12/cry...

Depending on what your problem is you may want a younger person or an older one, or both.

Honestly though, 30 isn't that old. Perhaps it was growing up with older parents (they had me when they were over 40) but I've never viewed even 40 as "old". Getting there, sure. But not old. Old is like 70 -- retirement home.

That being said, I feel like silicon valley gives preference to younger people in large part due to ingrained social expectations. A young 20-24 year old that pitches gets a lot of lee-way.

They have a passion and fire in them, so anything they say seems more impressive especially because you might not expect it of them. It's like a 5 year old regurgitating some obscure or advanced factoid...wow you say, what a smart young man! Objectively the kid isn't smart, but relatively speaking he appears very smart, especially compared to other 5 year olds.

The standards increase as you get older. You can't just walk in and pitch like you're an idealistic 20-something. You have to project complete confidence...essentially you need to act like the boss society expects you to already be. In contrast, younger entrepreneurs benefit from a sort of stereotype: younger people are "fresher" ideas, aren't held back by convention, etc. Older people are expected to know how to run shit and aren't allowed to just skate by on vision alone.

The most important thing he said that day I can remember was that his company was, no matter what, a "software" company, and even his chief legal team lawyer codes as well, and stressed the importance of understanding and doing coding.

Now, I'm 32, and made a lot of money in my late 20's, and also in my early 20's, but lost everything right before I turned 30 in some legal grow op investments in California. I've never had a successful startup, even though I had a successful affiliate program in college, and am beginning to feel old.

When I was 22, in college and making more than a plastic surgeon because I figured out how to generate oodles of mortgage leads online during the mortgage bubble, I not only felt different, the world itself was different. Everybody seemed to be happier, friendlier. The world is just simply a different place when you're making lots of money and building things, whether its in internet marketing or in the startup world. The world is a very shitty place when you're stagnant, barely making any money, and just rotting away some like dead animal.

Its hard to even think straight any more. It's like a part of me is just not there that once was. I exercise and eat healthily, but its just not the same. Maybe I need to start getting on some HGH treatment, but that's nearly 30k a year. Its probably more mental than hormones.

So yeah, if you're over 30, you're a slow old man, only if you let it get to you deep down.

"Why are most chess masters under 30? I don’t know. Young people just have simpler lives. We may not own a car. We may not have family. Simplicity in life allows you to focus on what’s important."

Then, have a look at this list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_top_title_holders_in_Go

Zuckerberg will learn this as he gets older.

He said this: Do not avoid hiring young people. They are great and terrific and amazing and full of ideas and energy. Give them more power and more responsibility. Just baby sit them periodically and gently guide them when they need it. Value them and utilize them.

Every other interpretation of that quote is just bizarre. Btw, when you are that young and have taken such a deep ownership of life and world, you see things other people just don't see, and one of them is the power of the twenty-somethings. And you might remember the power of 18-20 crowd.

Then again, I'm probably an old engineer at heart :) I love talking to those guys in their 50s that were programming COBOL or assembler before I was born. I was sitting in a career course thing recently and some of the older guys were sharing their experiences applying for jobs; all I could think was that I'd love to hire these guys if I had the means. Give me a wise engineer any day.

The old guys vastly underestimate the productivity difference between old tech and hip new tech.

The young guys vastly overestimate how much of their productivity is due to their own smarts rather than using hip tech, and don't sufficiently appreciate that when they get older, the experience they've accumulated won't be worth much, either. Re-learning everything every 5 years is only fun the first and second times.

But certainly, years of experience with some tech is becoming less and less valuable, as the tech is changing faster and faster.

When kids say mistaken things about stuff they don't understand, adults usually just ignore them because they're confident they know better. They don't (ordinarily) get upset. I think people denounce a quote like this for being naive and get upset about it because they worry it might be true.

But on the flipside, there is probably a good reason the US doesn't allow people to run for president before age 35. And most powerful leaders in the modern world are considerably older than that.

You lose something with age I have found. But, you gain something just as valuable. Thinking fast doesn't necessarily mean thinking better.

How much money a person makes is a very poor indicator of .. well, anything, except how much money got made.

> I would guess that a fair majority of the human race has, at one time or another, been young.

This supports Mark's point more than counters it.

> Most chess masters, he tells us, are under 30, and he explains why. Oops, sorry, no he doesn’t. Turns out he doesn’t know why, so he asks us. This seems something of a failure on two counts. First on his knowledge of the subject itself, and second, on the wisdom of bringing up your own lack of knowledge in a speech about the superiority of your mental abilities.

Not really; the statement is more in the spirit of "here is theory; here is data; data matches theory; I don't know why the data is, though." What matters here is whether most chess masters are under 30; if that's false, he should just say that.

> I have to give credit to Mr. Zuckerberg here. He has made me think, and I am a house divided; 50% laugh, 50% throw up.

What values do these sentences add?

> Jesus, if you so believe, was a simple man, who saved the world. Ghandi simplified his life in order to lead people to freedom. Buddha decamped to the wilderness, as did Moses. Mandela lived an enforced simple life for 27 years in prison because of the importance of his ideas. That is Importance. Those are concepts, beliefs, visions, that require a life of simplicity. Pulling an all-nighter to run a debugger in your cubicle just doesn’t seem the same somehow.

Here he acknowledges that simplicity matters, but says it doesn't matter the way Mark claims it does because it's less admirable or heroic than in the cases of Jesus and co. That's not the point. Mark's argument is simply that young people are smarter because they lead simpler lives, which lets them focus on things that matter, presumably to them. (Not things that are heroic.) And pulling all-nighters to run debuggers in a cubicle is something he says, not Mark.

> The difference is, all those 40 year olds have been through that 21 year old stage and know it well. They have learned how to be more focused, more efficient, more productive in less time so they can actually devote time to the things that really are important, like those kids. These are the people who can teach you how to build a happy, sustainable, productive, and satisfying life while still getting a job done.

He is probably agreeing with Mark here, but they are certainly not disagreeing.

> Take a stroll through the nearest cemetery some day. Look at the gravestones. Read the inscriptions. These are whole lives pared down to one phrase. Search for the ones that say CEO, or Chairman, or Acting Vice President, or President’s Club for Sales. Go ahead I’ll wait. Oh really? Well what do they say? Hmm, Loving Father, Devoted Mother, yes, that sounds about right. They all speak of love, family, the home, the heart.

When Mark made the remark about being younger and smarter, he was at a YC startup event. He was most likely stressing the importance of being younger and smarter in starting a startup. What this man's saying is irrelevant.

Overall, I personally feel this was upvoted to the front page more because of the controversiality of the topic than because of the quality of the article. All it does is throw a bunch of objects at random at something Mark Zuckerberg said at a startup event, and then reiterate a couple (old) irrelevant arguments about wisdom and experience.

Also, can we please raise the cut off if it's really young? Please?

What Zucka said, I'm presuming he did, but haven't checked, has truths & flaws all at the same time. Actually it matters little who said it. This is a great discourse potential. Indeed, I've said similar things in the past,probably way more stupid. What this demonstrates is your IQ to the world, albeit at a singular point in time. But the world is an unforgiving place, & the bigger they are the harder they fall. Reasonable we can assume that the numbers wanting to have a dig at you increases in a power-law-like manner, the `bigger´ you are and the more you say; if he'd thrown the word `women´ in there somewhere, it would have gone-up so much he could have been literally toasted, maybe even contract kill from some nutter. Still, it doesn't demean my respect of him, we all have stupid off-days. One has to look at the (verbal + doing) batting average, but I agree if the verbal average per se is low but it's best not to speak! Question is, are you prepared to cast the first stone? I'm not, 'cause I screw-up constantly. I've tripped over so many of my biases, I'm biased that I've biases.

As for me, I'm 45. Anyhow, that's what it says on my passport, but I don't believe it 'cause I still feel 12 on the inside. Moreover, I consider myself faster, more efficient, more clued-in & way smarter than I ever was. Physically, I was a former multiple WR in deep-sea freediver, but I can still do what I did way back when. So what gives? Secretly I'm running nature's `smart pills´. Want some?

Anyhow, back to the story. Innovation is not so much about IQ (I know plenty of `box-tickers´ with IQ of +140). But it takes more than IQ & speed. BIG innovation, which is or should really be the name of the game, requires MQ (= CQ + IQ) (C, for creativity & perspective-shifting, M, moonshot). Most people under 30 still have a deluded self-centered view of the universe (even secretly) which makes this incessant sense of self-centeredness difficult to allow for any majorly significant perspective-shifts to do 0 to 1. On the other hand, the `program´ in `old dogs´ is also pretty entrenched, which makes the field fairly level.

One last thing: I actually, paradoxically, agree with him(!), i.e., if you're doing incremental or `me too´ innovation, bu not if you're looking to do or invest in real-world (i.e., physical) moonshot innovation, of the type that will magically defy steadfast & age-old laws of nature, not the 140 characters stuff. Sure 140 characters will make money, but I'm not talking about that, I'm talking altering the real fabric of reality & your existence. In this extraterrestrial landscape the brain-strain & the chasm of difference is so deep & wide (think Mars' Valles Marineris vs. Grand-Canyon) that there simply ain't no way, no how you're going to generate or process, say, condense, the broad based & deep knowledge required to go from 0 to 1 in a short time. It can happen, but then we're talking about a special type of person (another conversation for another time perhaps). I'm talking about the BIG opportunities, the stuff that exists at the intersection of fields & which require really deep, sometimes life-long domain knowledge acquisition; the stuff of Newton, Galileo, Da Vinci, Taleb, & Co.). Some evidence for this:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/singularity/2013/09/11/peter-thi...

Peter's experiment wasn't the program per se, it was the young- & smart-guns lack of really deep & really broad basic fundamental education (self imposed or otherwise) that requires more time than going from kindy to even college, where by enlarge you're made to jump through pointless hoops over & over again, ad nauseum. No doubt, there is an education problem & a hack in the waiting. The problem with his approach was that it takes time for flowers to blossom, & to paraphrase Taleb:

“I’d rather be dumb & antifragile [i.e., old & experienced] than extremely smart & fragile [i.e., young & inexperienced], any time.” - Taleb (2012)

The bottom-line: risk saying or doing nothing & the outcome is certain: nothing. The trick is to have a willingness to alter your position if demonstrably shown to be wrong, 'cause that'll certainly boost your IQ, & most notably. All good!