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Photographer: Molly Cranna for Bloomberg Businessweek
Businessweek
Equality

Over 30? You’re Too Old for Tech Jobs in China

If you’re over 30, don’t bother applying.

Ou Jianxin said goodbye to his wife and two young children shortly after 9 a.m. on a cold day last December. He was on his way to Chinese smartphone maker ZTE Corp.’s Shenzhen headquarters—he’d been let go from his job as a research engineer at the company more than a week before, but management had asked to speak with him again, he said. “There are internal conflicts in our company,” he told his wife. “I’m very likely to be the victim of that.” Whether there was an actual meeting is unclear. What is clear is that sometime after he arrived, Ou went to his former office on the 26th floor of the campus’s research and development building and jumped to his death. He was 42 years old.

Four days later, Ou’s widow wrote a post on the blogging platform Meipian about her husband and the circumstances of his death. According to her account, ZTE refused to give a reason for Ou’s dismissal. Neither Ou’s widow nor representatives from ZTE responded to requests for comment, though Ou’s widow took down her post, according to the site, within two days after a reporter from Bloomberg Businessweek attempted to contact the company.