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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

#21

Post by flowerlad »

duxup wrote: post #20

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 t…

What would happen if you lied about your age (eliminate the first 10 years from your resume), both at the time of applying for the job and after joining the company? How much trouble can you get in for that? It doesn't seem unethical at all.

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

#22

Post by syshum »

duxup wrote: post #20

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 t…

I dont blame your buddy for not pursuing legal action, the legal system sucks. That said companies feel confident doing that largely because they know most people will not peruse legal action and even if they did they likely have the money to bankrupt them long before it ever got to a jury

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

#23

Post by duxup »

flowerlad wrote: post #21
duxup wrote: post #20

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 t…

What would happen if you lied about your age (eliminate the first 10 years from your resume), both at the time of applying for the job and after joining the company? How much trouble can you get in for that? It doesn't seem unethical at all.

I wonder. For my buddy, he'd get found out in the interview, for me ... I might be able to pass, maybe...

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

#24

Post by x87678r »

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.

> Older workers have experience.

Not always. older workers might be moving into coding from other areas. Or have no relevent experience in modern tech stack.

> Experience is expensive.

Fang Graduate roles pay > $200k. Lots of experienced people would love that but would never get hired.

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

#25

Post by duxup »

syshum wrote: post #22
duxup wrote: post #20

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 t…

I dont blame your buddy for not pursuing legal action, the legal system sucks. That said companies feel confident doing that largely because they know most people will not peruse legal action and even if they did they likely have the money to bankrupt them long before it ever got to a jury

Yeah I still think of that situation a lot. Feel a little dirty not able to do a thing, but needed to get a dang job.

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

#26

Post by commandlinefan »

socrates1998 wrote: post #17

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 m…

> cheaper, contractor rates.

Are contractors cheaper than permanent employees? I always thought it was the opposite - that's why so many positions are "contract to hire". They'd rather have a perm employee, but they want to deal with contracting for a few months just to be on the safe side.

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

#27

Post by thechao »

duxup wrote: post #20

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 t…

We tell tradespeople who are 40 years old to hit a bootcamp and get work in our magical software industry. Then, when those same people come to us to be hired our recruiting manager says stuff like "well... they're 40, but have only got 6 months of experience; we can't hire them as a new recruit, but they also don't have enough experience to hire as a senior developer — guess we can't hire them".

It's disgusting. Hire someone based on their experience, not their age.

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

#28

Post by majormajor »

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.

The companies I've worked at have been very bad at measuring things like "this is how much that bug cost us in terms of people who tried the app once and then never came back." They're so focused on the data sources that are easy to collect that things like this are basically invisible. They know churn rate is an important thing to track, but look at it much more from a "what about this new feature, or changing the color of the icons" perspective, than from a "what if our software was less of a dumpster fire?" perspective.

If you want to build quickly AND have flexibility AND have some reliability, you're gonna need some experienced employees, but if that's not a thing you've ever seen cause you've only ever worked with people fresh out of school... you're not gonna know what you're missing.

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

#29

Post by mc32 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #26
socrates1998 wrote: post #17

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 m…

> cheaper, contractor rates. Are contractors cheaper than permanent employees? I always thought it was the opposite - that's why so many positions are "contract to hire". They'd rather have a perm employee, but they want to deal with contracting for a few months just to be on the safe side.

It depends... if you need someone for a year a contractor is cheaper even at a higher prorated rate. You can terminate them at will as well.
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