Men in Silicon Valley are increasingly concerned about appearance.
Fitness makeup, dressing, medical aesthetic plastic surgery....... Even broken bones are elevated.
Silicon Valley programmer with increased broken bones
In other fields, age can mean experience, knowledge, status, and in Silicon Valley, a face that has experienced vicissitudes will only bring problems to career and life.
From the most basic botulinum injections and laser aesthetic medicine to long-downtime, expensive facial plastic surgery, height and muscle gain, tech men from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta are scrambling to appear on the appointment list of plastic surgery hospitals.
After all, even Musk, the richest man in the world, is indeed in a lot of good spirits after hair transplantation.
The most extreme example is in height. According to a study by Princeton University, taller men have more social confidence and happiness. There are even reports that 30% of the CEOs of the world's top 500 companies are over 182cm tall.
A plastic surgery hospital that specializes in bone breakage has found that many of its customers are from Silicon Valley Internet companies, and at its peak they were able to see 50 patients with similar backgrounds a month.
Silicon Valley men tell little lies to each other, but they know the truth. Claiming that he fell in the bathtub, broke a bone while skiing and needed to be operated to recuperate... In fact, they are spending more than 75,000 US dollars in surgical fees, going through a painful recovery period, and risking irreversible damage to the body, just to grow a few centimeters taller.
John Lovedale, who was interviewed by the media, was one of them. John, a network engineer, is 40 years old and was 172cm tall before surgery, which is actually only a few centimeters shorter than the average height of American men. But "it feels so good to be above average height," good enough to give him the courage to undergo a bone break and a heartfelt smile in the contrast photos left in the hospital.
During these three months, pain surrounded John, and he even worried that he had become addicted to painkillers after his bones recovered.
To complete the procedure, he hollowed out the center of his thigh bone, inserted an adjustable nail made of titanium, and extended the nail between the broken bones by one millimeter every day for three months after the operation using a magnetic remote control.
A doctor at a clinic compares a man before and after surgery
And before the bones were fully healed, every step John took was dangerous, and even tripping on a small stone could break his bones.
More unlucky people, the bone growth rate cannot keep up with the speed of nail lengthening, if you want to return to normal walking, you need to spend an additional more expensive surgery to restore the leg bone.
"But tall people just live a little easier," said John, who has not fully recovered and has difficulty walking in an interview with the media. ”
In just two months, a doctor named Deby Pashad received 20 requests from Silicon Valley programmers, mostly from companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft. "There's more than one from Microsoft," he said.
Behind plastic surgery, older IT people are "old and helpless"
Daniel, who has successfully eliminated the "sense of age" through multiple plastic surgeries, is a technician at a well-known technology company in Silicon Valley, and because he found himself "out of place" in the work environment, he began plastic surgery.
"Every time the company has a meeting, there is a circle of energetic and radiant young people, and as middle-aged people, they always feel that they are an obstruction among them."
A beach vacation in Italy, a yoga devotional on an Asian island, buying the most popular organic juice on Instagram to purify your body, and even losing a dozen pounds after a divorce are not enough to make Daniel perfectly blend into the young population. Regular Botox injections, eye bag removal surgery, and abdominal muscle shaping led many colleagues to think Daniel was in his 30s — when he was actually 48.
Daniel's plastic surgeon revealed that 25% of the patients he receives are Silicon Valley practitioners in a similar situation to Daniel. When people of their age first joined the workforce, the whole of Silicon Valley didn't care about appearance, so much so that IT workers once left the public with the stereotype of wearing glasses, baldness, and potted shirts. The former technological upstarts can stand out from the crowd of otaku as long as they pay a little attention to the neatness of their appearance.
"Good looks make me more money," says Nick, a technician who spends hundreds of dollars on botulinum toxin every quarter. In the eyes of Silicon Valley men, the money spent on medical beauty or plastic surgery is an investment in their career and future.
Another plastic surgeon in San Francisco said the needs of Silicon Valley men were clear: botulinum toxin, chin lift, liposuction; The purpose is also clear: to compete with younger colleagues.
A well-known venture capital firm in Silicon Valley once revealed to the media that most venture capitalists do not choose to bet on entrepreneurs over the age of 32. The San Francisco plastic surgeon also told the media: "One of the reasons many Silicon Valley men go to the doctor is that they feel that they have been discriminated against by age. ”
Such hidden discrimination also spreads to the selection of ordinary employees. Young people who are not married and have just graduated are offered lower salaries and are less affected by family factors. Due to the nature of IT work, young people with stronger learning ability are in no way inferior to senior, higher-priced "older" employees.
At one point, many companies in Silicon Valley ignored regulations and wrote age requirements in job postings. Google even paid job seekers $11 million in lawsuits for "consistent" age discrimination against employees over 40 during the hiring process.
But this does not stop companies from secretly discriminating against older employees, Daniel, who has invested a lot in medical cosmetic surgery, mentioned: "If everyone in the company knows that you are older than others, it will actually affect the distribution of job roles and promotion." ”
Heavy "slackness"
Even if you soar through the ranks of employees, start a business to become CEO, and sell options to achieve wealth freedom, in Silicon Valley, your life may still not reach the ceiling.
Brian, who also underwent surgery for bone augmentation, said in an interview with the media that although the 27-year-old has long achieved financial freedom in Silicon Valley, his net worth of $17 million still cannot make up for his height of only 170cm.
In the eyes of others, he must not lack a female partner when he is young and promising, but Brian silently counted that out of 100 date invitations he sent, only 5 or 6 times he could receive a positive answer.
In Silicon Valley, where the ratio of men and women is unbalanced and entrepreneurs are everywhere, money is perhaps the least important factor in the process of choosing a partner of the opposite sex. Even if he sits in the position of a technology company executive, his girlfriend, who is taller than himself, only shakes off the hand held by the two because passers-by glances more, can still make the Silicon Valley man who was originally quite confident in himself suddenly doubt life for a second.
In Silicon Valley, where everyone is ready to take off and everyone follows suit, everyone hopes to be a "winner in life" who is full of vitality and never gets old. And behind this carefully woven "sense of relaxation" is the bitter smile of Silicon Valley men as they climb down from the operating table with broken bones, liposuction, and facial filling.
Reference sources
Insider: Software engineers at large companies spend $75,000 to make themselves 3 inches taller
Financial Times: Silicon Valley is "old and helpless"
DailyMail: Silicon Valley men reveal age anxiety behind their motivations for plastic surgery
Written by: Bonsai, Jonas
Edited by Sebastian
Some of the images are sourced from Visual China
The copyright of the rest of the source network belongs to the original author