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Comment by eellpp | Hacker News Reader

> As a result of our effort in the past few years, 45% of our management team are in the post-70 generation, the post-80 generation make up 52%, while the post-60 generation only accounts for 3%. We are also fortunate to have 3,000 young people who were born in the 90s.

Basically they have declared management retirement/retrenchment age to 45 with a positive spin of culture etc.

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The large percentage of younger people in advance positions might be unique here since China only started to develop its economic in the early 80's. The people of 70's and 80's grew up with the rapid economic development and capitalistic market reforms. Also they were the generations that went back to school taking education seriously after the previous generations wasted their time in countless strife, like the Culture Revolution.

Alibaba probably couldn't find sufficient talents in the pre-70's generations.

I think you nailed it. When I read the article I was thinking about names like Buffet, Jobs, Murdock, who certainly added more equity to their companies especially after they turned 30. Instead of saying post 70's it seems more accurate that it's "Post Nixon."

Having young directors that have spent multiple years in a company is much better than having a professional CEO caste all from the same HBS/Accenture track.

> Basically they have declared management retirement/retrenchment age to 45 with a positive spin of culture etc.

I think... this is hardly the case. In the 1990s when Jack Ma got going in a bedroom hand typing listings, China had thin pickings of IT talent. Even today it graduates a lot of people with a working knowledge of C or Java (rarely either/or) but little more. Universities as graduation factories.

Alibaba has retained people from the start, instead of buying in and churning management. As the company ages the proportions, ceteris paribus, pushes it older, but it is not ceteris paribus and as the company grows, and has grown, the averages push it younger.

Senior Management ascension age is 45.

Jack Ma is 50, handing senior leadership to the 45+ crew. He's giving people a 5-10 year reign at the top, and keeping the funnel balanced to maintain that ratio.

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