I believe a big part of the problem is that the old larks, and with them their belief about lark superiority, simply don't retire as they used to, thus keeping young people and fresh ideas from moving up the "chain of command".
Being a hard night owl myself, I'm happy to work at a place with flexible hours, but then again most of my company is <40-50 years of age. People in BigCos often aren't as lucky and to make it worse "office politics" with the competitiveness associated there (and mentioned in the article) effectively kill off any motivation to chsnge.
This is the worst sort of ageism. In my professional experience there is no correlation between youth and fresh ideas.
Big companies with competent leaders are perfectly capable of rapid change when survival is at stake. The classic example is the pivot from desktop software toward the Internet that Bill Gates led at Microsoft.
> This is the worst sort of ageism. In my professional experience there is no correlation between youth and fresh ideas.
Look into politics, no matter the country, or any big corporation - it is usually an old-white-men club (exceptions confirm the rule). And they are hell-bent on keeping the situation so that they benefit, and the younger generations suffer for it.
The social contract was that at reaching ~65 (here in Germany) years, you retire, and someone younger rises to your position. The current situation with people working way past their 80s, either due to stubbornness (rich old white men) or due to economic need (poor old people, PoC), breaks that contract, and young people are locked into lower-paying positions because they cannot rise up.
To provide my claims with data: average age of DAX company boardmembers is 61, with some companies at 70 (!!) [1], only 7% of CxO posts are held by women [2]. In addition, the government commission "Deutscher Corporate Governance Kodex" actually has literally asked for "fresh blood" in boards [1].
Being a hard night owl myself, I'm happy to work at a place with flexible hours, but then again most of my company is <40-50 years of age. People in BigCos often aren't as lucky and to make it worse "office politics" with the competitiveness associated there (and mentioned in the article) effectively kill off any motivation to chsnge.