Live data from Hacker News

Feds: IBM did discriminate against older workers in making layoffs

wraltechwire.com

121–130 of 200 posts

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

#121
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Hir…

I wonder if there’s a legal case here? A lot of companies only hire entry-level from new college grads (or even worse, returning interns). How is that not age discrimination?

There is no age requirement on being a recent college grad. They tend to be clustered tightly in a certain age range, but a 45 year old graduating would still have access to that same recruiting pipeline.

Non diverse results doesn't imply illegal discrimination.

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

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a reference for this? Thanks.

"Young people are just smarter." is what he said in 2007, I think he would be careful so that he would not say anything that controversial again.

I mean, he was only 23 then, and proving his own negative.

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

#123
post #98

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…

I am months from being 50 and I am a cloud architect/eng/admin. I am a former Microsoft MVP (rMVP) in System Center, I have co-authored books on the subject, spoke at conferences, blah, blah, I was a pretty big deal in the space, so much so that competitors would routinely try to hire me. I can still recall the moment when I thought 'I need to get out of this space and into cloud' At the time I was part of a sales te…

I've worked among people that share those sentiments. I would characterize them as being wary of hidden risks and I can't disagree with their position.

Like everything else on a hype train a lot of the people talking don't communicate essential details, or even the basics.

"There is no cloud, it's just someone else's computer."

It makes complete sense that experienced IT teams would be hesitant to move their employers' stuff onto another company's infrastructure which they have no control over.

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

#124

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…

> just collecting a paycheck...

If anybody thinks there aren't a lot of young people at large tech companies just collecting a paycheck, I have some bad news for them...

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

#125

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.

[deleted]

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

#126

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…

We just hired, for what we thought was something of a bargain price, a chap who spent the last thirty years working in a variety of software and hardware development positions. The aerospace industry is shedding people like there's no tomorrow (because for some of the industry, there isn't a tomorrow) so we got a good deal. I'm not ashamed to admit it; I had the budget for a mid-experience software engineer but got a…

Get them a raise ASAP and pay them what they're worth.

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

#127
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roles I've seen pay the same, but FTs benefits of healthcare/401k/vacation are worth 50k/yr.

I found this helpful rule of thumb to estimate the cost of benefits: https://beebole.com/blog/how-to-calculate-the-real-cost-of-a... >...the real salary of an employee ends up “being 18% to 26% more than a worker’s base salary.

Also, for an on-site employee, the company would need to add the cost of office space, equipment, IT support services, etc.

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

#128

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…

[deleted]

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

#129
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…

Something that often gets overlooked is how much better older people are than younger people at getting information from others. That is a critical and time-saving skill in software development.

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

#130
post #62
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…

> after changing careers. This is a big one. There are arguments for not hiring older experience programmers, then there is a different issue about hiring older people that want to be new programmers. I'd think the second group wont have much hope of getting hired.

Given equivalent coding experience and ability, I'd rather hire an older programmer than a younger programmer.
Post reply on HN