earliest millenials are pushing 40s and younger are at least well experienced and aware of the job market shenanigans, I don't think firing older people as a policy would really be attractive to them. unless this was written by some old stooge that thinks everything under 50s is young and hip, I don't see a correlation here.
IBM Fired as Many as 100k in Recent Years, Lawsuit Shows
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Re: IBM Fired as Many as 100k in Recent Years, Lawsuit Shows
#12To be fair, I did see quite a few people who probably "officially" retired 25 years ago walking around with canes last time I visited an IBM campus. I actually thought it was very cool and really wanted to hear their stories.
Maybe you were lucky enough to spot IBM Master Inventor John Wilson testing his smart cane that gathers data to help doctors and physical therapists understand how well you’re recovering from an injury.
https://ibmblr.tumblr.com/post/157117436482/yes-volumes-i-it...
Re: IBM Fired as Many as 100k in Recent Years, Lawsuit Shows
#13I doubt IBM lays off its older workers solely to appeal to Millenials. It's more likely that older workers are laid off because they are more expensive due to higher higher pay, have more paid time off, use more healthcare and are more politically calibrated to their organizations than younger workers.
It feels like something that IBM regularly does, similar to Cisco's revolving lay-off cycles. Microserfs by Douglas Coupland has a part where the protagonist's father is fired from IBM after being there for years.
Re: IBM Fired as Many as 100k in Recent Years, Lawsuit Shows
#14Of course, the explanation is BS, everybody sees that.
But I want to comment that as a young mainframer (I started 14 years ago at the age of 26, with a big IBM competitor), I really enjoyed working with older people.
They work quite hard (they have survived lots of changes in the organization, and that - in majority of cases - means that their contribution was appreciated somewhere), often are less crazy (they are set in life, don't have to "compete" anymore), don't panic or get overexcited too much (they have seen lot of stuff and that moderates their emotions), have good stories from life (they lived through one already), and you can learn from them a lot (they often have weird experience in areas that you would never expect).
And a youngster can complement them nicely - trying out new things, implementing new technology, experiment, bring new viewpoints; often they will appreciate your energy to do that.
Re: IBM Fired as Many as 100k in Recent Years, Lawsuit Shows
#15When I went to the multi-day IBM recruiting event for new grads about 2 years ago, there were red flags ALL OVER the place. It was frankly ridiculous. Talking with some employees they were basically saying "don't work here" as plainly as they could while being watched over by IBM recruiters.
You just knew you were walking into a failing company defined solely by bureaucracy and politics with employees that don't really want to be there.
On top of this the total compensation was downright insulting even at the upper end of the range.
Nope'd out of there pretty quickly, even though I was rather desperate for a position at the time.
Edit: Did I mention how horrible the interview process was? You needed to install software with admin permissions on your computer alongside having your webcam active the whole time. Throughout the interview you needed to record 2-minute skits with random prompts given to you. Have you ever tried talking into a webcam with no one on the other end, unprepared? What nonsense. Not sure what anyone at IBM was thinking with this.
Re: IBM Fired as Many as 100k in Recent Years, Lawsuit Shows
#16s/Millennials/Generation Z/ at this point. Millennials are all in their 30s and older now.
> s/Millennials/Generation Z/ at this point.
I don't think that works either, Gen Z are either really early in their career and only making up a tiny fraction of the industry or not in any career at all yet, it's hardly the demographic IBM needs to appeal to.
As an older millennial my hair is starting to take on a grayish tinge and ageism in the industry is becoming a direct concern, so this can only lower my opinion of IBM.
Re: IBM Fired as Many as 100k in Recent Years, Lawsuit Shows
#17Firing talent because of age is not so smart I think. Of course I don't know who they fire, etc. But I'm young, yeah, and I want to distance myself from IBM products. Why? I'v been setting IBM Tivoli/Spectrum protect to backup client computers and, ugh, is it ugly, unfriendly and complex piece of software. I'v also touched the server part. Maybe it's just me, the windows guy (but who loves scripting) and it is more a…
The simple fact, that IBM stuff is never used by big sites (fb, spotify, google, etc..) despite their solutions being available for ages should lead anyone to the conclusion that they are salesware.
QRadar is a glorified syslog server with a query interface (bought by IBM in 2011, formerly developed by Q1 Labs, est 2001), and ... again the fact that Splunk is available (started 2 years after Q1 Labs), that the ELK stack is even mentioned in SIEM circles, that OSSIM an open source alternative is seen as more usable all just point to the conclusion that QRadar too is just salesware :/
Re: IBM Fired as Many as 100k in Recent Years, Lawsuit Shows
#18Why do people still up-vote bloomberg's clickbait garbage exactly?
Re: IBM Fired as Many as 100k in Recent Years, Lawsuit Shows
#19Firing talent because of age is not so smart I think. Of course I don't know who they fire, etc. But I'm young, yeah, and I want to distance myself from IBM products. Why? I'v been setting IBM Tivoli/Spectrum protect to backup client computers and, ugh, is it ugly, unfriendly and complex piece of software. I'v also touched the server part. Maybe it's just me, the windows guy (but who loves scripting) and it is more a…
The simple fact, that IBM stuff is never used by big sites (fb, spotify, google, etc..) despite their solutions being available for ages should lead anyone to the conclusion that they are salesware. QRadar is a glorified syslog server with a query interface (bought by IBM in 2011, formerly developed by Q1 Labs, est 2001), and ... again the fact that Splunk is available (started 2 years after Q1 Labs), that the ELK st…
What's salesware?
Re: IBM Fired as Many as 100k in Recent Years, Lawsuit Shows
#20Haven't they gotten headlines for this almost every year for the past three decades?
Pretty much. They've been scything employees for as long as I've been working. They've also been in court many times over age discrimination...at least for as long as I can remember.
They had their own decently sized building where I used to live, now there isn't a single employee in the entire state.
IBM is far past the point where they can appeal to younger folks. They have no headspace in anyone under 40, and certainly not with anyone with any talent.