Dive Brief:
- HubSpot and its culture has made headlines as of late, as a new book by 'Silicon Valley' writer and technology journalist Dan Lyons casts the company in a critical light thanks to its "homogenous" startup culture, Fortune reports.
- An excerpt of Lyons' book was first published on Fortune. In the piece, he claims that HubSpot essentially practices ageism in its hiring scheme by preferring millennials over older workers. Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, co-founders of HubSpot, responded in a LinkedIn post by defending their culture and their inbound marketing product, saying "it does work and it is the exact opposite of spam."
- HubSpot was rated the fourth best place to work in a recent Glassdoor ranking of large companies.
Dive Insight:
Fortune notes in their response that their LinkedIn post does little to address Lyons' ageism claims.
"They do note that the average employee age is 29 and that HubSpot employs 85 people over the age of 40, but doesn’t add that those “85” comprise just 7% of the company’s total workforce," Fortune reports.
The book and subsequent discussions comes at a time when millennial workplace leadership has garnered some media attention – and doubt. The New York Times recently ran a piece about Mic's workplace, ran entirely by millennials, that cast the generation in an unfavorable light.
However, many companies are also shifting to accommodate the desires of their growing millennial populations, going as far as ending permanent offices in some areas in favor of a flexible work policy. While millennials have surged in the workplace, and therefore leading select companies, the actual impact of their leadership doesn't yet have much data.
