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Feds: IBM did discriminate against older workers in making layoffs

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

#71

Post by xienze »

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.

> Are contractors cheaper than permanent employees? I always thought it was the opposite

Absolutely. Consider that the average salaried employee’s real cost per hour is around 2 * (annual_salary / hours_in_work_year). So if you get a contractor for less than that per hour, you win.

> 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.

Ah, generally speaking no. Yes, contract to full time conversions happen but not terribly often. “Contract to hire” is most of the time just baiting someone to hop into a less desirable circumstance (contract versus full time), with the “promise” of being converted. After six months, oh dear, we couldn’t get funding for that full time position. Would you like to renew your contract?

Not saying there are companies that do a true “probation period” via contract to hire, but most of the time it’s BS.

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

#72

Post by mschuster91 »

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…

> 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.

Simple: the experienced older programmers will call out management for bullshit because they recognize bullshit when they see it.

Fresh, new ones won't object when management says "we're on the NoSQL train now, so that we can attract more fresh talent (and funding sources)!!!", which makes the managers happy, but by the time that the failure modes of new fancy tech (e.g. no ACID compliance, bazillions of edge cases, insecure defaults like MongoDB had) become apparent, the managers have already made their millions in bonuses and went off to ruin another company.

It's all about keeping us programmers as replaceable cogs - and to prevent as many of us as possible from rising in the "chain of command". Simply put, the supply of programmers is way bigger than there is a demand for managers or higher-level programmers. This will bite the whole industry in the ass when all those 20-somethings who make decent careers now after some coding bootcamp suddenly find out that there won't be any pay rises or opportunities...

edit: also, new programmers won't complain if you push them past everything legally allowed - many don't know the laws or don't care, so 80 hour work weeks with no paid overtime (=40 "free" hours of work!) can be done on young people, but as soon as they hit ~30 and want to settle down a bit (especially if they want children) companies get in trouble.

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

#73

Post by claudeganon »

logicslave wrote: post #39

Leetcode is veiled ageism where those who pass have inordinate amounts of free time to study nonsense

This is of a piece with how various forms of discrimination are laundered through neoliberal meritocracies.

Instead of engaging in direct forms of discrimination, you build systems of arcane hurdle-jumping, whose outcomes produce the intended discrimination. That way, you always have a story about how this or that person “just didn’t measure up.”

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

#74

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

Most of these workers aren't programmers.

They are in various technology roles, especially at a place like IBM often aligned with some IBM-specific corner of tech. Definitely happens with other companies too. HP used to have an "up or out" policy where they would fire SMEs systematically for some stupid reason. I remember laughing my ass off when they flew some guy in to tell me that they were firing 8 people on one of my teams, which I replaced with the same people employed at a smaller company for 50% of the cost. The employees got a 25% raise in that case. HP lost 100% of the revenue, which probably earned some bureaucrat a bonus somewhere.

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

#75

Post by HumblyTossed »

tylerFowler wrote: post #63
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.

It's also regional, I started my career at a startup in Kansas City, where the situation is completely the opposite. The average age of the company was 40 or so, particularly in engineering.

Also industry specific as well. I'm in the transportation technology industry and age isn't really an issue.

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

#76

Post by jnwatson »

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.

Still, one needs to consider the demographics of programmers in general. Even ignoring issues like moving to management, health, etc, there simply weren't many programmers that started in the 1980's.

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

#77

Post by lotsofpulp »

crmd wrote: post #45
commandlinefan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What IBM really cares about is limiting the older employees’ defined-benefit pension liabilities. That is why it was so important to IBM that these folks were made to no longer be IBM employees. Lower salary was icing on the cake.

The wrong assumptions behind those defined benefit pension liabilities ended up being quite costly, this zero interest rate environment for the previous decade and foreseeable future will wreak havoc on them. I'm surprised they didn't freeze and terminate the plan years ago.

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

#78

Post by JoeAltmaier »

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.

I've taken a cut each time I sign on vs contracting. Only done it when equity or length of engagement make it attractive.

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

#79

Post by jnwatson »

holidayacct wrote: post #52

This happens repeatedly and isn't anything new. This happens because there are a bunch of mentally ill people running tech companies that want jobs to be about "belief". They don't want older people in tech because they want to empire build with the latest and greatest insecure technology. They want to create frustration engines with poor engineering practices they older tech workers won't put up with it. The goal is…

Also, it is far easier to pay young folks in lottery tickets. Most of us older folks understand the actual value of stock options having been through the process a few times.

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

#80

Post by api »

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…

It depends on what you mean by new tech.

If you mean having a deep understanding of how this stuff works and an ability to solve very hard problems, older programmers are usually better.

If you mean knowing the latest fad language or framework, then no. That's because older programmers have seen fads come and go and have learned to recognize one, and they don't waste their time learning or using them.

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