<https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/apr/06/forbes-30-under-30-tech-fin...> ust a few years ago, Charlie Javice was riding high. In 2019 the tech CEO landed a spot on Forbes’s 30 Under 30 list for her work on a startup called Frank, which she described as “Amazon for higher education”. What does that catchy but completely empty phrase mean? It means Frank helped students navigate the financial aid process. It was apparently so successfully at doing this that JPMorgan Chase acquired the company for $175m in 2021 and Javice was made a managing partner at the bank. [...] The problem here isn’t Forbes, of course; the problem is the vision of success that we’ve been sold and the fetishizing of youth. 30 Under 30 isn’t just a list, it’s a mentality: a pressure to achieve great things before youth slips away from you. The pressure can lead certain ambitious people to take shortcuts. And, in fact, shortcuts are encouraged: millennials, after all, grew up being told to “fake it ’til you make it”, cash in now until you become a withered, irrelevant, 30-year-old prune. If you exaggerate a little bit, that’s not fraud, that’s hustle! Until, of course, the justice department comes knocking.