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Intel accused of age discrimination

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Re: Intel accused of age discrimination

#61

Post by danieltillett »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #41
danieltillett wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the bosses at Intel just hate older people (unlikely as they are almost all older people) they are doing this for economic reasons alone. I say this as someone already over-the-hill age wise that we really need to find a way to allow people as they age to be able to accept a lower wage that matches their productivity. Far fewer old people would be made redundant if they got a wage cut every year instead of a r…

> Unless the bosses at Intel just hate older people (unlikely as they are almost all older people) People routinely hold negative stereotypes of groups that they belong to.

Yes that is true to an extent. As an oldish person I know what the failings are of my generation. Having said that I don't hate people of my generation.

Re: Intel accused of age discrimination

#62

Post by danieltillett »

microtherion wrote: post #43
danieltillett wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If employees don’t lose value as they age then why do employers want to get rid of them? It is not because they don’t like them. There is only one reason and that is they are not productive enough for their wage compared to someone younger. Just because it is hard to measure productivity doesn’t mean it can’t be measured. Most employers have a reasonable idea of the price/productivity of their employees. What we have…

> You certainly don’t want an old surgeon operating on you. When I had gallbladder surgery a few years ago, it felt VERY reassuring to have a surgeon in his 50s who could cite a track record of hundreds or thousands such surgeries, with a minuscule complication rate. You do NOT want a surgeon fresh out of med school who hacked a GAN into a surplus Tesla industrial robot to perform the procedure, no matter how bleedin…

Surgeons reach their peak in their late 40s and decline. If the level the surgeon got to was very high then they may well still be very good, if not as good as they were when younger.

I do agree that you don't want to be one of a younger surgeons learning cases.

Re: Intel accused of age discrimination

#63

Post by danieltillett »

humanrebar wrote: post #49
danieltillett wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If employees don’t lose value as they age then why do employers want to get rid of them? It is not because they don’t like them. There is only one reason and that is they are not productive enough for their wage compared to someone younger. Just because it is hard to measure productivity doesn’t mean it can’t be measured. Most employers have a reasonable idea of the price/productivity of their employees. What we have…

> People in every profession decline as they age. Supreme Court appointees aren't in their 20s. Neither are Premier League coaches. Same for granting tenure to university professors. And citing price/productivity is ignoring the points I made about productivity being both hard to measure with any accuracy and being a bad measure of value besides.

It seems the same response has come up a few times here. Everyone starts out at a relatively low level, rises to a max and then decline as they age. Some people reach such a high level that even in decline they are still very productive. I like to think I am one of these people ;)

Just because something is hard to measure with certainty does not mean that it can't be measured. While your boss might not be able to precisely measure your productivity they will likely have a pretty good idea.

Re: Intel accused of age discrimination

#64

Post by theothermkn »

danieltillett wrote: post #10
DeusExMachina wrote: post #3

> older workers tend to be better paid So, if the metric is "remove employees that cost the most but don't seem to justify the cost," it's going to look like age discrimination, even if it wasn't. I don't know whether Intel did this or not, but the point is that you can't assume the intent by the result alone.

Unless the bosses at Intel just hate older people (unlikely as they are almost all older people) they are doing this for economic reasons alone. I say this as someone already over-the-hill age wise that we really need to find a way to allow people as they age to be able to accept a lower wage that matches their productivity. Far fewer old people would be made redundant if they got a wage cut every year instead of a r…

> Unless the bosses at Intel just hate older people (unlikely as they are almost all older people) they are doing this for economic reasons alone.

This is the most exemplary statement of naive (very probably American) class unconsciousness I’ve ever seen on HN. The distinction is between owners/managers and workers. First, an older member of the petty bourgeoisie is “bought in” as an effective part of the machinery of control. An older worker is viewed as an expensive and worn out “human” resource by that machinery. Managers don’t have to hate old managers to fire old workers. Second, “hate” is a hopelessly blunt instrument to use to understand systemic age discrimination. It’s not “hate” that drives older workers out; it’s a race to the bottom that needs to be regulated and penalized out of existence. Third, and finally, the “economic reasons alone” are exactly the pressures toward discrimination. To let them off for that would be like letting a slasher off on the grounds that they liked to spill blood.

We really need people to think in a more nuanced way if we’re to have any hope of avoiding a global race to the botttom with a maximally impoverished populace. I don’t hold out much hope.

Re: Intel accused of age discrimination

#65

Post by fma »

Humdeee wrote: post #58
fma wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be nice if productivity was measured by line of codes. That way we get rid of all the managers and executives who spend their days to come up with stupid ideas and say 'make it so by arbitrary date'.

This often encourages bloated and less elegant, simple code

My comment was actually sarcasm...because you can't measure middle managers and executives output by lines of code since they don't actually code. Not sure why so many people are offended on the idea when it's not even possible to implement.

Re: Intel accused of age discrimination

#66

Post by fma »

croon wrote: post #55
fma wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be nice if productivity was measured by line of codes. That way we get rid of all the managers and executives who spend their days to come up with stupid ideas and say 'make it so by arbitrary date'.

Yeah, I can't wait to get pay deducted for days when you remove fluff from the code base or refactor code into more readable and efficient software. Lines-of-code/time is a terrible measurement.

My comment was actually sarcasm...because you can't measure middle managers and executives output by lines of code since they don't actually code but more often than not they are the ones pushing for LOC measurment - or some other objective measurement, when they themselves have no quantitative way to measure output.

Re: Intel accused of age discrimination

#67

Post by fma »

myth_drannon wrote: post #42
fma wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be nice if productivity was measured by line of codes. That way we get rid of all the managers and executives who spend their days to come up with stupid ideas and say 'make it so by arbitrary date'.

Well as with developers, some managers are good and some not. Let's not follow Larry Page's attempt to fire all the project managers at Google in 2001 http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/04/25/googl...

Interesting article. I had no idea Google was called BackRub? I was using Google...in 2001 (even before?) and never knew of it as BackRub.

Anyways - I probably wouldn't want to fire all managers. But based on the directives they come up with, I feel managers and executives have lost touch with their product and process. It would be nice of they could have a dose of "Undercover boss" and be forced to do some worker bee work once in a while. Then their directives would probably be closer to reality.

I work in the internal integration space and work with lots of teams. Very often they'd come up with some requirement, or a date that is far fetched and it all comes from above. I'd need to talk some sense into people and tell them why their idea is bad, or their timeline poses a risk.

Re: Intel accused of age discrimination

#68

Post by mmt »

danieltillett wrote: post #63
humanrebar wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People in every profession decline as they age. Supreme Court appointees aren't in their 20s. Neither are Premier League coaches. Same for granting tenure to university professors. And citing price/productivity is ignoring the points I made about productivity being both hard to measure with any accuracy and being a bad measure of value besides.

It seems the same response has come up a few times here. Everyone starts out at a relatively low level, rises to a max and then decline as they age. Some people reach such a high level that even in decline they are still very productive. I like to think I am one of these people ;) Just because something is hard to measure with certainty does not mean that it can't be measured. While your boss might not be able to pre…

> Everyone starts out at a relatively low level, rises to a max and then decline as they age

> While your boss might not be able to precisely measure your productivity they will likely have a pretty good idea.

You've repeatedly asserted both of these points but haven't pointed to any evidence to back them up.

I think most commenters here are being particularly polite in talking about the imprecision or difficulty in measuring performance. The less polite assertion is: people managers are, in general, downright incompetent at the part of their job. We've routinely seen reports of CEOs being extremely highly-compensated despite not actually running a company well. There have even been articles suggesting that there's no difference in performance between the more highly-sought-after (and paid) CEOs and other ones, but nothing rigorous. There's no reason to believe the ineptitude wouldn't extend all the way down.

As for your assertion about everyone declining as they age, I think you only need to look at any recent research on dementia, as that has debunked the notion that cognitive decline is a normal part of aging. If cognitive decline isn't to be expected merely from age, it doesn't stand to reason that the productivity caused by that cognition would be expected to decline, either.

Re: Intel accused of age discrimination

#69

Post by mmt »

xstartup wrote: post #23
danieltillett wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the bosses at Intel just hate older people (unlikely as they are almost all older people) they are doing this for economic reasons alone. I say this as someone already over-the-hill age wise that we really need to find a way to allow people as they age to be able to accept a lower wage that matches their productivity. Far fewer old people would be made redundant if they got a wage cut every year instead of a r…

I think many employers are able to justify it because When an employee is at the best position (age wise), they hop jobs a lot and negotiate higher pay even at the detriment of the company. Yes, it does cost a lot when an employee hops too much. Employers have no option here. This system will always have winners, you can definitely improve the situation but you'll have to tax the winners, it has never worked well in…

> Employers have no option here.

Considering employers hold the vast majority of the power in the relationship, that's a rather extreme conclusion.

As other commenters have pointed out, it's easily within the employers' abilities just to pay more money (and/or offer better terms to increase job stability, like meaningful severance packages or usable retirement plans). This actually used to happen routinely, but employers stopped valuing employment longevity, so job-hopping is what they got.

Additionally, as another commenter alluded to by mentioning job growth, working environment matters, too. Although not every employer can offer every employee (enough) growth, other forms of respect and opportunities (not just lip service) make a difference.

Companies like Southwest Airlines make it something of a point of pride that they keep their turnover low by keeping their employees happy, so it's not as if the principle has somehow aged out of applicbility.

The far likelier explanation, to my mind, is that everyone else is concerned with short-term incentives over long-term value.

Re: Intel accused of age discrimination

#70

Post by fuzzfactor »

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #2

It's weird that the article pulls out statistics that underline Intels wrongdoing (ρ(age, awareness of rights/pay/...) but not the statistics that might be the reason: Older people are less innovative, learn slower and so on. Ergo, if you're for example firing the bottom percentile of "adapted the new data entry tool", there is a good chance that the avg will be higher than the avg of all people working there

> Older people are less innovative

Well, maybe you are just speaking for yourself or your peer group.

I would be a little more inclusive in my terminology and more likely to say "The average person can be less innovative after they have aged excessively."

One of the interesting things about natural-born innovators is that they are very seldom average people.

> Everyone starts out at a relatively low level, rises to a max and then decline as they age

When it comes to native innovative ability, it starts out at a relatively high level, is capable of growing exponentially over time, and only declines in growth rate AFTER the subject has aged excessively.

Innovation itself is one of the extreme cases where the only viable substitute for starting early and decades of experience, is to have a windfall of good fortune.

Which is why most innovation occurs due to a windfall of good fortune rather than the result of a goal being reached as planned.

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