In 2012, three high-tech companies in Silicon Valley announced they were laying off a combined 48,000 employees. Layoffs continue this year, including last week’s announcement that an otherwise profitable Cisco Systems was letting 4,000 people go. At the same time, the total number of jobs in the [Silicon] valley and in San Francisco’s tech hub is on the rise. In fact, tech executives claim to have tens of thousands of jobs going begging, so much so that they need to bring in educated workers from overseas to fill them.

“I want to stress the importance of being young and technical,” [Mark Zuckerberg ] Facebook’s CEO told … “Young people are just smarter. 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.” Younger and cheaper Like working around the clock, seven days a week on app development, coding and Web design …

In Silicon Valley, age can be a curse. By Andrew S. Ross