Yiren Lu, a recent Harvard grad who now studies computer science at Columbia, takes a step back from the startup world to wonder what it means for our tech infrastructure when all the bright young things want to make apps but aren’t skilled in networks and hardware — the stuff that makes the Internet go. And then there’s the culture clash between older (read as: 35+) coders and tech executives who have experience running companies and the younger entrepreneurs who may (or not) be on to the next big thing. In her story, Lu articulates the creeping angst of Silicon Valley: “the vague sense of a frenzied bubble of app-making and an even vaguer dread that what we are making might not be that meaningful.”

Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

Yiren Lu | New York Times Magazine | March 16, 2014 | 28 minutes (6,989 words)