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Intel accused of age discrimination

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Re: Intel accused of age discrimination

#11

Post by chrisbennet »

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #2

It's weird that the article pulls out statistics that underline Intels wrongdoing (ρ(age, awareness of rights/pay/...) but not the statistics that might be the reason: Older people are less innovative, learn slower and so on. Ergo, if you're for example firing the bottom percentile of "adapted the new data entry tool", there is a good chance that the avg will be higher than the avg of all people working there

Given that "Older people are less innovative, learn slower and so on." what would you guess the average age of founders with a successful startup exit is?

(A) 22

(B) 26

(C) 31

Re: Intel accused of age discrimination

#12

Post by chrisbennet »

chrisbennet wrote: post #11
blackbrokkoli wrote: post #2

It's weird that the article pulls out statistics that underline Intels wrongdoing (ρ(age, awareness of rights/pay/...) but not the statistics that might be the reason: Older people are less innovative, learn slower and so on. Ergo, if you're for example firing the bottom percentile of "adapted the new data entry tool", there is a good chance that the avg will be higher than the avg of all people working there

Given that "Older people are less innovative, learn slower and so on." what would you guess the average age of founders with a successful startup exit is? (A) 22 (B) 26 (C) 31

None of the above. Try 47.

https://digitopoly.org/2017/07/17/the-young-entrepreneur-myt...

Re: Intel accused of age discrimination

#13

Post by myth_drannon »

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #2

It's weird that the article pulls out statistics that underline Intels wrongdoing (ρ(age, awareness of rights/pay/...) but not the statistics that might be the reason: Older people are less innovative, learn slower and so on. Ergo, if you're for example firing the bottom percentile of "adapted the new data entry tool", there is a good chance that the avg will be higher than the avg of all people working there

I would say older employees in corporations tend to be middle managers. If the layoffs affect more management than the engineering side you are going to have a skewed graph.

Re: Intel accused of age discrimination

#14

Post by blackbrokkoli »

chrisbennet wrote: post #11
blackbrokkoli wrote: post #2

It's weird that the article pulls out statistics that underline Intels wrongdoing (ρ(age, awareness of rights/pay/...) but not the statistics that might be the reason: Older people are less innovative, learn slower and so on. Ergo, if you're for example firing the bottom percentile of "adapted the new data entry tool", there is a good chance that the avg will be higher than the avg of all people working there

Given that "Older people are less innovative, learn slower and so on." what would you guess the average age of founders with a successful startup exit is? (A) 22 (B) 26 (C) 31

That is interesting (especially regarding the comment below citing an even higher age)!

But I'm not sure how that converts to the skills you need to have to be an employable Intel worker, which are most certainly a lot different

Re: Intel accused of age discrimination

#15

Post by rdl »

andreareina wrote: post #7
300bps wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know whether Intel did this or not, but the point is that you can't assume the intent by the result alone Would you feel differently if the case were about race instead of age? For example, if Intel laid off a population of people that was 22% African American while the population of the people remaining in the company was 10% African American, would you feel the same way?

We have a societally-accepted reason for older people to earn more -- experience, responsibility, and time-in-grade are correlated both age and pay. The same cannot be said for race or sex.

If the job is something with such a steep learning curve and plateau (maybe due to periodic technical revolutions?) that someone with 20 years experience is only insignificantly better than someone with 5 years experience, economics would support paying them the same. If we want to artificially subsidize some more expensive older workers, they should be subsidized directly by society, not by forcing employers to do so.

(There are a lot of jobs where 20 years gives better performance, or where being 51% good va 50% good would be worth a huge premium, but not all.)

Where this really gets complex is startups which are growing in headcount and shrinking in equity offer size. An early hire there might be objectively worse than a new marginal hire but has an equity vesting package which makes him vastly better paid for each month today. IIRC it was Zynga which tried to forcibly renegotiate this (instead of just firing people who were presently underperforming, the usual route).

Re: Intel accused of age discrimination

#16

Post by sgift »

rdl wrote: post #15
andreareina wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a societally-accepted reason for older people to earn more -- experience, responsibility, and time-in-grade are correlated both age and pay. The same cannot be said for race or sex.

If the job is something with such a steep learning curve and plateau (maybe due to periodic technical revolutions?) that someone with 20 years experience is only insignificantly better than someone with 5 years experience, economics would support paying them the same. If we want to artificially subsidize some more expensive older workers, they should be subsidized directly by society, not by forcing employers to do s…

> If the job is something with such a steep learning curve and plateau (maybe due to periodic technical revolutions?) that someone with 20 years experience is only insignificantly better than someone with 5 years experience, economics would support paying them the same.

Good news then that this isn't how tech jobs work, where about 99% of all "technical revolutions" are just renaming old things which had fallen out of fashion and use them again.

Re: Intel accused of age discrimination

#17

Post by mark_edward »

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #2

It's weird that the article pulls out statistics that underline Intels wrongdoing (ρ(age, awareness of rights/pay/...) but not the statistics that might be the reason: Older people are less innovative, learn slower and so on. Ergo, if you're for example firing the bottom percentile of "adapted the new data entry tool", there is a good chance that the avg will be higher than the avg of all people working there

>Older people are less innovative, learn slower and so on.

Why should I or anyone else believe this about older and more experienced programmers? I can't think of many fields where more experienced practitioners are generally worse...

Re: Intel accused of age discrimination

#19

Post by chrisbennet »

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #14
chrisbennet wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that "Older people are less innovative, learn slower and so on." what would you guess the average age of founders with a successful startup exit is? (A) 22 (B) 26 (C) 31

That is interesting (especially regarding the comment below citing an even higher age)! But I'm not sure how that converts to the skills you need to have to be an employable Intel worker, which are most certainly a lot different

My (admittedly snarky) post was in response was to the "old people are slow" comment. You are probably right though on the different skills.

Perhaps being a successful founder doesn't require as much neural plasticity as being an older worker at Intel. ;-)

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