Leaders like Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon say experience trumps everything in business—including brains. But Ricardo Amper, the founder and CEO of $1.25 billion software company Incode Technologies, believes Gen Z’s naivety is a professional blessing rather than a career curse.
“My belief [is] that coming out with a fresh mind, first principles, is important. That’s why young people are particularly helpful in tech, because they’re less biased,” he tells Fortune. “I think too much knowledge is actually bad in tech: you’re biased.”
The Gen X entrepreneur knows exactly what talent he needs after spending more than two decades founding and leading companies to unicorn status. In 2000, Amper founded social network company La Burbuja Networks.
And just a couple of years later, he had a hit on his hands: the Mexico City-raised businessman launched functional beverage company AMCO Foods in 2003, and scaled it to a top market contender. The biggest bread company in the world, $263 billion titan Grupo Bimbo, acquired AMCO Foods in 2004.
Amper marked his third stint as a founder in 2015 when he launched AI-powered identity verification business Incode. For the past 25 years, he’s had a front-row seat in testing out what employee qualities drive success.
“Character is more important than experience…Now, with [generative] AI and ChatGPT, it’s more true,” Amper continues. “What I look for is grit…People who have a proven ability to have integrity and character is something that I really care about, because entrepreneurship is mostly about perseverance and character and adversity, and so you need people like that around you.”
Balancing unbiased Gen Zers with emotionally mature, older staffers
While Amper is a big proponent of young workers in tech, he isn’t completely blind to the generation’s drawbacks. Tech-savvy Gen Zers can leverage the fact that they’re new to the workforce—they’re fresh-faced and completely oblivious to industry intricacies, allowing them to be laser-focused on the task at hand. But the Incode CEO stipulates that young staffers’ naivety needs to be counterbalanced in a well-oiled company.
“It’s easier to find people who are unbiased as young people, but you have to balance that, because also you’re going to find people who are less emotionally proficient. Those capabilities are developed through experiences,” Amper explains. “So it’s a combination. You hire young people, but you also have to hire older [employees].”
“You can find people who’ve gone through tough things and bring that to the company, and also younger people who might not have had that, but they have this other side,” he continues.
The CEOs who see young workers as the next unlock
Amper’s assertion that young, inexperienced Gen Zers are the secret sauce for tech companies is actually playing out in real time. Last year, one Gen Z-powered AI company stepped onto the scene and energized the war rooms of U.S. tech billionaires: DeepSeek. The Chinese powerhouse, led by CEO Liang Wenfeng, credits its success to its young talent.
“If you are pursuing short-term goals, it is right to find people with ready experience,” Liang said in a 2023 interview with Chinese media outlet 36Kr. “But if you look at the long-term, experience is not that important. Basic skills, creativity, and passion are much more important.”
Unlike his computer science-hungry competitors, the millennial DeepSeek founder is looking to Gen Z and humanities majors to spearhead his revolutionary AI. Liang even added, unconventionally, that work experience isn’t at the top of his list when considering whom to hire at the unicorn company.
“Having done a similar job before doesn’t mean you can do this job,” the CEO insisted, adding that younger inexperienced workers are more innovative than seasoned AI experts who can get bogged down by their own knowledge. “When doing something, experienced people will tell you without hesitation that you should do it one way. But inexperienced people will repeatedly explore and think seriously about how to do it, and then find a solution that suits the current actual situation.”
Even Fortune 500 companies making a fortune outside of tech are embracing Gen Z workers, instead of casting them aside. The $62 billion retail giant Colgate-Palmolive is leaning on the young digital natives to help the heritage brand grow; Sally Massey, chief human resources officer at Colgate, told Fortune that Gen Zers come with in-demand skillsets and fresh perspectives on the future of work.
“[Gen Z] have grown up with technology. They’ve grown up in a very different way than some of the other generations in the organization,” Massey recently said. “They bring with them new ideas, new perspectives, curiosity…They’re pushing us to get better and to do things differently—I think it’s great.”
