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Feds: IBM did discriminate against older workers in making layoffs

wraltechwire.com

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Re: Feds: IBM did discriminate against older workers in making layoffs

#11

Post by ska »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #4
liability wrote: post #2

Not surprising. Years ago one of my (gray haired) mentors opened my eyes to ageism in this industry by asking me to pay attention to how many programmers in the office have gray hair. Once you start looking for it, it becomes obvious that age discrimination is rampant. Some blame the young workforce on the industry being young, but the industry is decades old at this point so I don't think that excuse holds water.

Older workers have experience. Experience is expensive. You can generate a lot of revenue with workers with less experience, even factoring in mistakes, lower productivity and output, etc. Age discrimination is rarely punished, and when it is, the penalties are minimal. Incentives matter.

> You can generate a lot of revenue with workers with less experience, even factoring in mistakes, lower productivity and output, etc.

It's not at all clear that there a net gain here, so the situation is at best complex.

Re: Feds: IBM did discriminate against older workers in making layoffs

#13

Post by mikelyons »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #8
ethbr0 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Older workers have expectations of employers. Expectations are even more expensive than experience!

Who knew it's outrageous to expect work life balance and reasonable compensation for experience.

The incentive structure of unregulated capitalism is "Extract maximum value with minimum expense. As much as possible externalize the costs."

The things to extract value from: employees, environment, government policy, tax code, if I was smarter I'd think of a few others.

Re: Feds: IBM did discriminate against older workers in making layoffs

#14

Post by mywittyname »

liability wrote: post #2

Not surprising. Years ago one of my (gray haired) mentors opened my eyes to ageism in this industry by asking me to pay attention to how many programmers in the office have gray hair. Once you start looking for it, it becomes obvious that age discrimination is rampant. Some blame the young workforce on the industry being young, but the industry is decades old at this point so I don't think that excuse holds water.

Some of the best people I've worked with are those who've been with the company for a long time. IME, the dead weight tends to be phased out over the years, so there's a bit of survivorship bias with the remaining ones.

However, the road certainly isn't easy for them. Despite the utility of these people being totally obvious to anyone whose ever worked with them, with each change of leadership comes another fight to keep their jobs.

The one that stuck with me was when I worked for one of the biggest companies in the world, and they laid off the man who had more patents than anyone else in the company, by a good margin. He was in his late 50s, and he came onboard after getting his Ph.D, leaving once to found a startup, which was acquired by the company after a few years. He was brilliant, humble and could have absolutely been a professor at MIT or a principal at Google. But he loved working for our company.

I got the hell out of Dodge after that.

Re: Feds: IBM did discriminate against older workers in making layoffs

#15

Post by mikelyons »

ska wrote: post #11
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Older workers have experience. Experience is expensive. You can generate a lot of revenue with workers with less experience, even factoring in mistakes, lower productivity and output, etc. Age discrimination is rarely punished, and when it is, the penalties are minimal. Incentives matter.

> You can generate a lot of revenue with workers with less experience, even factoring in mistakes, lower productivity and output, etc. It's not at all clear that there a net gain here, so the situation is at best complex.

In what way is the net gain not clear here?

It seems clear to me that "even factoring in" means that there is a net gain for the employer, at a net loss to employees.

Re: Feds: IBM did discriminate against older workers in making layoffs

#17

Post by socrates1998 »

The big tech giants have used this marketing ploy that "older workers don't understand new tech" to undercut them at almost every opportunity.

I honestly have no idea why they are allowed to get away with this in the media and public opinion. Maybe because older people don't know new tech, so they think older programmers don't know it either?

It's insane to me that an older programmer with decades of experience and multiple language fluency is somehow "worse" than a 25 year old who has been programming professionally for a few years at best and probably knows fewer languages.

Tech companies think they can get away with it because they do exactly what IBM did, fire all the old hats, then hire back the ones they really do need at cheaper, contractor rates.

It's pretty revolting to me.

Sure there are old people at these large tech companies just collecting a paycheck and really aren't better than the younger guys, but it's clearly not to the extent that IBM would make you think.

Another reason why I won't ever work for a large company again.

Re: Feds: IBM did discriminate against older workers in making layoffs

#18

Post by PragmaticPulp »

liability wrote: post #2

Not surprising. Years ago one of my (gray haired) mentors opened my eyes to ageism in this industry by asking me to pay attention to how many programmers in the office have gray hair. Once you start looking for it, it becomes obvious that age discrimination is rampant. Some blame the young workforce on the industry being young, but the industry is decades old at this point so I don't think that excuse holds water.

I've worked at companies where older people are rarely seen, but I've also worked at companies where older developers are the norm. In fact, I started my career at a company where I was one of the few people under the age of 40.

I don't have any statistics to support this, but I've wondered if workers tend to congregate by age groups at different companies. That is, if employees prefer to work with coworkers around their same age, they'll tend to move to companies that match their own demographic. If you're not in that demographic, you'll see fewer of those people around you. Obviously this doesn't apply to everyone, but it's a factor at some level.

Geography plays a big role, too. If you consider "the industry" to be high cost of living areas like Silicon Valley then people will naturally self-select out of the area as they start raising families and growing older. Move to a more family-friendly city and suddenly it's more common to see diverse age ranges working at companies.

Re: Feds: IBM did discriminate against older workers in making layoffs

#19

Post by randcraw »

mikelyons wrote: post #15
ska wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can generate a lot of revenue with workers with less experience, even factoring in mistakes, lower productivity and output, etc. It's not at all clear that there a net gain here, so the situation is at best complex.

In what way is the net gain not clear here? It seems clear to me that "even factoring in" means that there is a net gain for the employer, at a net loss to employees.

"A net gain" implies that savings in a youngster's salary exceeds the losses due to their inexperience. You're saying you know how all these add up in the neterprise?

I sure don't. I doubt most employers do either, since IT productivity is notoriously hard to quantify. Generally, it's more important to know what not to do. And that's something that only comes with time -- making mistakes and learning from them.

Re: Feds: IBM did discriminate against older workers in making layoffs

#20

Post by duxup »

A fellow older classmate of mine and I were looking for work after changing careers.

We were talking about his recent interview when he got a call from the recruiter and put her on speakerphone. She told them they were going with someone else because they thought the other person "fit the culture" better.

He asked if she could give some feedback on what that meant and she flat out said "Some people thought you were too old." Shocked he asked again and she repeated it. I don't think it even occurred to the recruiter that it was wrong.

My buddy chose not to do anything, both of us looking for work and etc really didn't want to get into some legal situation and looking for work.

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