從神奇小子到灰發(fā)谷歌族：當科技領袖變得更成熟

Several years ago, a plastic figurine began appearing around Google’s offices, an aging alien with gray hair, a Google Glass headset and a sign that read, “Get Off My Lawn!”

幾年前，一個塑料小塑像開始出現(xiàn)在谷歌(Google)的辦公室附近——一個花白頭發(fā)的老外星人，戴著谷歌眼鏡，一個標志上面寫著“滾出我的草坪!”

The doll, a special edition of Google’s Android mascot, was a jokey tribute to the Greyglers, a group for the 40-and-over crowd at Google, and the doll hinted at how it felt to be an older worker in tech: funny, self-conscious, a little out of place.

這個玩偶是谷歌安卓系統(tǒng)吉祥物的特別版，是對“灰發(fā)谷歌族”(Greyglers)——40歲及以上的谷歌用戶群體——的玩笑致敬，這個玩偶還暗示著年長科技工作者給人的感覺：風趣、自我意識強烈，有點不合時宜。

The Greyglers still exist, but they’re no longer such an anomaly. Sundar Pichai, Google’s 45-year-old chief executive, would fit in the group. So would Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who co-founded the search engine as graduate students two decades ago; Susan Wojcicki, an early employee who runs YouTube; and most of the company’s other high-ranking executives.

灰發(fā)谷歌族依然存在，但他們已經(jīng)不再那樣與眾不同?，F(xiàn)年45歲的谷歌首席執(zhí)行官桑達爾·皮查伊(Sundar Pichai)符合這個群體。二十年前在讀研究生期間共同創(chuàng)立了這個搜索引擎的拉里·佩奇(Larry Page)和謝爾蓋·布林(Sergey Brin)也符合這個群體;負責運營YouTube的早期員工蘇珊·沃西基(Susan Wojcicki)，以及該公司其他大部分高級管理人員，都屬于這個群體。

For years, the self-appointed leaders of Silicon Valley were young people — mostly men — with age-appropriate behavior. They adopted brash mottos like “move fast and break things” and eschewed work-life balance in favor of all-night hacking sessions in offices that looked more like college dorms. Their successes were cheered, and their sins were shrugged off as the cost of innovation.

多年來，硅谷這些自封的領袖都是年輕人——主要是男性——他們的行為和年齡很相稱。他們使用“快速行動，打破陳規(guī)”之類惹眼的格言，并且無視工作與生活的平衡，更喜歡在看上去活像大學宿舍的辦公室里搞通宵突擊行動。他們的成功受到歡呼，他們的原罪被當作創(chuàng)新的代價而不予理會。

“Young people are just smarter,” Mark Zuckerberg crowed back in 2007, when he was the 22-year-old wunderkind behind a fledgling social network.

“年輕人更聰明，”馬克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)在2007年自鳴得意地說，當時他22歲，是一個羽翼漸豐的社交網(wǎng)絡背后的天之驕子。

Now, of course, Facebook is a global powerhouse, and the company’s pursuit of growth at all costs has led to some truly dire consequences around the world and fueled a larger backlash against tech. At the same time, Zuckerberg has disproved his own theory. Now 33, he is still not old by any measure (except perhaps his own). But he is a smarter and more self-aware leader than he was a decade ago, and he has shown more willingness to accept responsibility for the company’s mistakes. After years of moving fast and breaking things, Facebook is at least acknowledging its flaws and trying, albeit clumsily, to fix them. That’s a start.

當然，F(xiàn)acebook現(xiàn)在已經(jīng)成了全球大公司，不惜一切代價地追求增長，導致全球各地出現(xiàn)了一些真正可怕的后果，并引發(fā)了對科技的強烈反感。與此同時，扎克伯格證明了自己的理論是錯的。他今年33歲，以任何標準而言(或許除了他自己的標準)，他都還不算老。但他成了一個比十年前更聰明、更自覺的領導者，他表現(xiàn)出更強烈的愿意，希望為公司的錯誤承擔責任。在經(jīng)歷了多年的快速行動和打破陳規(guī)之后，F(xiàn)acebook至少承認了自己的缺陷，并試圖修復它們，雖然有些笨拙。這是一個開始。

There’s a lot of growing up happening in today’s tech industry, where former whiz kids made their fortunes and are now settling down, starting families and starting to think about their legacies. Tech’s workforce remains young — according to PayScale, the median employee at the five largest tech companies is around 30, roughly a decade younger than the median American worker — but the industry’s leaders have gotten older, and are seemingly more attuned to the power they wield.

當今的科技行業(yè)成熟了許多，曾經(jīng)的神奇小子發(fā)了財，現(xiàn)在都安穩(wěn)了下來，組建家庭，開始考慮身后留名的事情?？萍紕趧恿σ廊荒贻p——根據(jù)PayScale的數(shù)據(jù)，五大科技公司員工年齡的中位數(shù)在30歲左右，大約比美國勞動者的中位數(shù)小了10歲——但這個行業(yè)的領導者們正在變老，對自己手中的權力也看似更為敏感。

“Five years ago, there was no talk of empathy or moral responsibility,” said Om Malik, a venture capitalist who has written about the tech industry for years.

“五年前，沒人談同理心或道德責任，”就科技行業(yè)撰文多年的風險投資人奧姆·馬利克(Om Malik)說。

In recent weeks, I spoke to numerous industry insiders about this coming of age. Here’s what I learned.

最近幾周，我與許多業(yè)內人士就這種成熟進行了交流。我了解到了以下內容。

Gregor Hochmuth, 33, an early engineer at Instagram, said some of today’s internet giants had grown up with positive-thinking cultures that left them vulnerable to abuse.

33歲的格雷戈爾·霍赫穆特(Gregor Hochmuth)是早期加入Instagram的一名工程師，他表示，今天的一些互聯(lián)網(wǎng)巨頭成長于正向思維文化之中，這使他們面對謾罵無力招架。

“The idea that a product could make your life worse was not in anyone’s perception,” said Hochmuth, who left Instagram in 2014.

“一個產(chǎn)品會讓人的生活變更糟這種事，大家想都沒想過，”霍赫穆特說，他在2014年離開了Instagram。

That perspective helps explain the shock many founders felt when the internet grew into the foundation of global culture and commerce, and products they had built as quirky experiments became pieces of critical infrastructure.

這個看法有助于解釋許多創(chuàng)始人所感受到的沖擊，他們看到互聯(lián)網(wǎng)已經(jīng)演化成全球文化和貿(mào)易的基礎，而他們出于個人古怪趣味而建起來的產(chǎn)品，成為一些關鍵基礎設施。

“No one was thinking about ‘Wow, in 15 years, billions of people are going to be using this site every day,'” said Andrew McCollum, 34, one of Facebook’s founders, who left the company in 2006 and is now the chief executive of Philo, an internet TV company. “The goal was ‘How do we create something great?’ — not ‘What’s our plan for world domination?'”

“當時沒人會想‘哇，15年后，每天都會有幾十億人用這個網(wǎng)站’，”34歲的安德魯·麥科克倫(Andrew McCollum)說，他是Facebook的創(chuàng)始人之一，在2006年離開Facebook后，他現(xiàn)于網(wǎng)絡電視公司Philo擔任首席執(zhí)行官。“那時候的目標是‘我們如何創(chuàng)造出偉大的東西’——而不是‘我們打算怎樣稱霸世界’?”

You could chalk these statements up to self-interest. But Maureen Taylor, a leadership communication expert who frequently coaches tech executives, said this kind of earnest self-examination was becoming more frequent among founders.

你可以認為這樣的言論是出于個人利益。但經(jīng)常向科技高管提供指導的領導力溝通專家莫林·泰勒(Maureen Taylor)表示，這種真誠的自省在創(chuàng)始人之中愈發(fā)常見。

“As you get older, you realize your responsibilities are bigger,” she said. “People are becoming very thoughtful about the ramifications of technology, and remembering that the whole point was to make the world a better place.”

“隨著年齡的增長，你就會意識到自己有著更大的責任，”她說。“人們對科技的后果思考得越來越多，他們重新想起，這一切的初衷就是要讓世界更美好。”

The tech industry’s stereotypical accessory used to be the hoodie. Today, it might as well be the Baby Bjorn. There are a lot of new parents among tech elites, including Zuckerberg and Kevin Systrom, 34, a co-founder of Instagram. (Evan Spiegel, the 27-year-old chief executive of Snap, is expecting his first child this year.) And parenthood seems to be shaping their attitudes. In an interview with The New York Times this year, Zuckerberg cited his children as one of the reasons he was so focused on fixing Facebook.

在過去，科技行業(yè)標配是一件衛(wèi)衣。而現(xiàn)在，可能就是一件嬰兒背帶。在科技精英之中，有許多人初為父母，包括扎克伯格和Instagram公司34歲的聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人凱文·斯特羅姆(Kevin Systrom)。(27歲的Snap首席執(zhí)行官埃文·斯皮格爾[Evan Spiegel]今年將迎來第一個孩子。)而父母的身份似乎也影響了他們的觀念。今年，扎克伯格在接受《紐約時報》采訪時說，他的孩子是他如此專注于糾正Facebook的原因之一。

“It’s important to me that when Max and August grow up that they feel like what their father built was good for the world,” Zuckerberg said.

“能讓麥克斯和奧古斯特長大后覺得，他們的父親做的事對世界有益，這對我來說很重要，”扎克伯格說。

Silicon Valley works a bit like a forest — as old trees decay and die, they decompose and fertilize the next generation of growth. And today’s largest tech companies are beginning to show their age. Facebook is 14 years old, and Twitter is 12. Google, at 20, is now nearly as old as Microsoft was in 1998, when Google was started.

硅谷的運轉有點像森林——當老的樹木衰敗、死亡，它們會腐爛而后為下一代的生長提供養(yǎng)分。如今，最大的那些科技公司也開始上了年紀。Facebook已經(jīng)14歲，Twitter有12歲。20歲的谷歌和1998年谷歌創(chuàng)立時的微軟一樣大。

The tech industry’s maturity may be a sign of cyclical renewal. Fifteen years ago, Larry Ellison — the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, and the enfant terrible of an earlier generation of tech moguls — denounced what he saw as Silicon Valley’s slow-footed stagnation. (The tech industry was “as large as it’s going to be,” he predicted.)

科技行業(yè)的成熟可能是周期性更新的標志。十五年前，身家億萬的甲骨文公司(Oracle)聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人、上一代科技巨頭中的搗蛋天才拉里·埃里森(Larry Ellison)譴責了他所看到的硅谷的駐足不前。(他曾預言科技產(chǎn)業(yè)“規(guī)模頂多就這么大了”。)

Ellison was wrong, of course. Tech wasn’t stagnant, but the generation of mature companies that included Oracle was on its way to being eclipsed by newer and scrappier ventures.

當然，埃里森錯了。科技并非停滯，只是包括了甲骨文在內的這一代成熟公司正在被更新、更有闖勁的企業(yè)超越。

If history is any indication, that cycle will repeat itself and a new crop of young tech leaders will emerge. But hopefully they’ll learn from the mistakes made by their predecessors. Technology is too important now, and we can’t afford another generation of naïveté.

如果歷史有所指示，那便是這個周期將會再次重復，新的一批年輕科技領軍人物將會涌現(xiàn)。但希望他們能從前輩的錯誤中有所學習?？萍既缃裉^重要，我們已經(jīng)承受不起又一代的幼稚天真了。