Intel Faces Age Discrimination Allegations Following Layoffs (engadget.com) 262
Intel is under investigation for potential age discrimination in its approach to layoffs initiated in 2016, according to a report. Engadget: The Wall Street Journal has learned that the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is investigating claims that Intel's large-scale layoffs discriminated against older employees. In a May 2016 round that cut 2,300 workers, for instance, the median age of those let go was 49 -- seven years older than those who remained. The EEOC hasn't decided whether or not it will file a class-action lawsuit against Intel, but the affected people will be free to pursue civil lawsuits if the regulator doesn't find enough evidence to pursue its own case. The EEOC isn't allowed to confirm or deny investigations. However, an Intel spokesperson categorically denied that age played a role.
They weren't old.. (Score:4, Insightful)
...they just weren't young and vibrant.
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"Wish you were here" -- Pink Floyd
Re:They weren't old.. (Score:5, Interesting)
And they had higher health care costs.
We really need to remove health care as an incentive to lay off older people and an anchor on business profits that prevent them from competing with companies in countries where business doesn't pay for health care.
It's so funny because *everyone* gets old. It's in *everyone's* interest to prevent age discrimination.
Re:They weren't old.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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All it takes is allowing people to fully deduct the cost of their own healthcare. As it is now, it's a tax benefit for consumers to have healthcare paid for by their employers. Change it so consumers can deduct the cost of health insurance/healthcare and there will be zero reason to stay with the existing approach. And a side benefit is they employee will now be in direct control of the expenditure on their own healthcare, most likely resulting in reduced expenditures on healthcare.
How about just taking the middlemen out of healthcare? Get rid of the insurance companies and private insurance. Sure, the government might not be as efficient as private companies, but single payer still has to be cheaper when you realize that right now you are paying for the overhead/profit for the insurance companies, profits for the insurance company stockholders, the overhead/profit for local brokers and plan administrators, etc. You have at least 3 layers of people making money off your healthcare
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How is removing insurance companies and inserting Government going to be cheaper or more efficient? At least now, insurance companies have to offer some level of service, or they lose clients. With single payer - you have, effectively, a single insurer who does not have to answer to anyone.
Barring the fact government is (or at least should be, except for tax collection) a non-profit entity, you are effectively removing 3 different layers that derive profit off of the money you spend on health insurance premiums before you even see a doctor. Removing those is an automatic cost savings, even if you still have to pay out of pocket like most insurance plans make you do now. As for one single insurer, yes, that would be great. That means that everything is already negotiated out and everyone i
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If that were true, why aren't all govt operations cheap and efficient? 3 levels of profit, done right, is way more effective than a single level of government, done poorly (which is how most implementations go down). Hell, just look at the military comple
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Except that our healthcare costs us several times more than it does in countries with socialized medicine.
Meanwhile, try actually hanging out in a business office for a few days. Just watch and listen. Never again will you be able to claim that business is run efficiently with a straight face.
Because of multiple insurance companies all with their own huge set of billing procedures, rules, and quirks, medical billing actually requires a 6 month course to absorb the specialized knowledge needed above and beyo
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Everything in the US costs several times more than it does in other countries. Military expenses, education, healthcare, take your pick.
Note that like healthcare, education is much more socialized in Europe, so you're arguing my point there. As for military, that's because we keep starting wars all over the place. We should stop doing that.
As for being healthier, have you seen the per-capita beer consumption in the U.K.? Have you ever heard of poutine? Time to stop making lame excuses. Europeans are healthier because they can afford to go to the doctor and take their prescribed meds.
And the procedures, rules and quirks have nothing to do wi
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There are many, many layers in military contracts, each with healthy markups. Accountability has high costs.
Governments are generally limited in a few ways that private industry is not: rate of change, and silos of influence are the main ones I understand. Some times these things are benefits and some times they are not, but healthcare is generally more in the former group.
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I thought America was a Federation of States. Why does the Federal Government spend so much on healthcare? Veterans?
You could do like Canada, where healthcare is a Provincial thing with the feds setting minimum coverage and some equalization payments as well as handling veterans, the natives and such. 14 healthcare systems, and it is a lot easier to replace the Provincial government then the Federal as your vote counts more and it is a different election, often with different political parties.
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Re:They weren't old.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actual hard data shows other countries pay 50% to 33% of our cost and have better adult and infant mortality ratings.
Our insurance is *great* if you are one of the "winners". It's bad for the other 80%. Insurance companies delayed coverage for a friend of mine until it was too late and she died of a curable form of cancer. They do this. All the time. That's why the ACA was passed in the first place. Insurance companies were literally canceling coverage after people had paid premiums for years as soon as they got sick. People who lost their jobs couldn't get coverage and died.
We need something that's fair to everyone. You never know when you may not be in the "Winners" group any more. It happens all the time. Chronic illness being a leading reason.
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Just to expand and emphasize on this:
Our Federal Government spends about $1.2 trillion a year on healthcare already - they already spend as much as other nations spend, per capita.
Population of USA: 325 million. US Fed Spending on health: $1.2 trillion. Spend / Capita = $3392
Population of England: 53 million. UK Gov Spending on health (in England): £124 billion* ($165 billion). Spend / Capita = $3113
So, to within a few percent, our governments spend similar amounts on healthcare.
Yet how many actually get by with just the Federal Government spending? Vanishingly few. We end up buying private insurance (or extended insurance) because that already provided is basically worthless.
And yet, other than prescriptions for certain medications, I need pay nothing for medical care. I need no additional insurance to cover injury or illness, I have no
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*In fairness the NHS is becoming increasingly cash strapped and, rather tragically, is being incrementally privatised, so it's not all roses in the 'Garden of England'.
That's a deliberate policy by the government though, not an inherent problem with social healthcare.
Re:They weren't old.. (Score:5, Insightful)
How is removing insurance companies and inserting Government going to be cheaper or more efficient?
Because insurance companies have exactly the opposite motivation that we want in a health provider. What we want is to maximize health. What they want is to maximize profit. For insurance companies, actually treating people is a *cost*, which they will try to avoid. On the contrary, extracting more money in any kinds of ways is a benefit, and they'll try to maximize it. They have no motivation to reduce the customer's cost - on the contrary, the worse they treat the insured, and the more they bill them, the better.
The government has no such perverse incentives; moreover, a large single payer system, such as Medicare, could use it's bulk purchasing power to negotiate great reductions in prices (as any reasonable business does). In the USA there are however LAWS forbidding Medicare to negotiate, which is just crazy.
This is not just idle banter - look at this study [nih.gov], provided by the NIH. Private insurers have an average overhead of 18%, while public insurers (Medicare and Medicaid) have an average overhead of 3.1% (table 1 in the study). As another point of interest, the overhead of the Canadian single payer system is 1.8%. The study concludes that removing the insurance companies overhead would save a staggering 350 billion dollars a year - which would be enough to cover the cost of treating all uninsured people in the USA, and leave enough over to improve everybody's current health care.
billing / codeing is a big mess in us healthcare! (Score:2)
billing / codeing is a big mess in us healthcare!
Some dockets need to spend a lot of time on billing to just get paid.
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I remember listening to a co-worker argue with the insurance company over the phone. She had been to the doctor for some sort of "well-baby" pregnancy checkup. The office had coded it wrong so insurance denied the claim, even though it was clearly a covered visit. She was asking the insurance person how it should be have been coded, and the insurance person was accusing her of trying to commit "fraud" by getting it coded right so it would be covered. It was absolutely insane... "guess the code to get pa
well single payer stops balance billing and networ (Score:2)
well single payer stops balance billing and network BS.
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You know... for the bottom 60% that's almost useless to completely useless, right? With a low income that's already maxed the limit on deductions, a deduction is worthless. And even with a deduction, that only lowers the cost of health care by about 15% or less for everyone making $120,000 and less. This leaves a family facing a $12,000 insurance bill and getting a $2000ish deduction.
Over 20 other countries use single player government health care and their health care costs are half to a third of our co
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Fully deduct just means a 20-30% discount (Score:3)
The only real fix is a single insurer; e.g. a single payer
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How about federal health care. Pay it from taxes, win win. Don't pay for a military, pay for health care.
Balance in favor of health care a bit.
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And a side benefit is they employee will now be in direct control of the expenditure on their own healthcare, most likely resulting in reduced expenditures on healthcare
Unless you are a doctor, you are not sufficiently knowledgeable about what health care you actually need in order to make good decisions that reduce expenses. And this has been demonstrated in study after study.
A functional "free market" requires an efficient market, and the asymmetry of knowledge guarantees the health care market can not be efficient.
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Until you get in an $89,000 car accident like my young 30's friends.
Or you have a stroke like my 45 year old bud.
Or your house burns down and you are hospitalized with $45,000 in ICU bills.
And the point isn't that *you* personally benefit anyway. If *everyone* needed $6,000 in health care each year, then the cost of providing it would be over $6,000.
The point is that 3 people out of a hundred need $60,000 in health care. The other 97 are fine. Everyone pays $600 and shares the risk.
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Do you understand what "castrophic care" insurance is? Because it doesn't seem like you do. That's insurance which only pays for the big stuff - so you're not covered for routine doctors visits, but your losses are capped at $5k or $10k when something big happens.
It's an odd thing: a policy with a $5k annual deductible can be more than $5k/year cheaper than one that covers everything. Think about that for a minute - you come out ahead even if you have $5k of costs, none of which are covered. It just goe
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Then you develop a chronic condition that the insurance company assures you is definitely not catastrophic but you find the bills certainly are.
What we need is to quit messing around with individual insurance and just socialize the whole damned thing.
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Then you develop a chronic condition that the insurance company assures you is definitely not catastrophic but you find the bills certainly are.
What we need is to quit messing around with individual insurance and just socialize the whole damned thing.
Yup.. and just a couple months ago some 25 year old died because he wasn't covered and couldn't get diabetes medicine. Totally avoidable. Happened in america.
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That said- we have to be rational. We can't spend a billion dollars a year to keep someone alive.
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There do have to be limits, but pretty much the entire developed world that is not the U.S. seems to manage it OK.
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Did you save up enough to cover that $20K every year for the rest of your life?
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The problem is that few people realize the cost of their healthcare while employed, because they don't have to pay any of it. It's when unemployed, or underemployed with someone who doens't cover medical, that you notice the costs.
Overall, health care costs could go down if the insurance covered the minor stuff. The $5K deductible causes many people to avoid the doctor's visit for the small stuff. But if you keep the small stuff fixed you can often avoid the major stuff. Ie, my provider has no deductible,
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That isn't necessarily true. But there are many non-work related pools. Often you have to be a member for a year before you're eligible.
How do you talk people (Score:3)
More importantly, while there are plenty of arguments to be made in favor of single payer healthcare any time it comes up the insurance companies spend half a billion dollars or more shooting it down. I still get people who tell me they don't want it because of "death panels". I ask th
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I wish we could get a national referendum. Take out the deep south and the rural parts of Texas and Arizona and you've got over 60% in favor of medicare for all.
Take out the people who disagree with me and everyone agrees with me!
As far as "medicare for all", Medicare is underfunded by $27.9 trillion (by GAAP), or about $230k per taxpayer. We can't afford it now - how's it supposed to work financially if we pile more people into it? And remember, you still need (supplemental) health insurance if you have Medicare, as there's a lot it doesn't pay for, and Medicare itself isn't free, so it's not like all the money that currently goes as health insurance premiums co
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Medicare is underfunded because you are being shafted by for-profit insurance companies. A key part of having a social healthcare system is that prices are either fixed at a low level or the state simply runs the hospitals itself.
By the way, when are you going to fix your signature? It's factually incorrect and this has been pointed out to you a few times already.
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Bending over backwards to not step on the toes of insurance companys' toes (as well as pharmaceutical companys' toes) is why medicare's funding isn't adequate. Tell them and other for-profit healthcare companys to sod off if they don't like it would make medicare's funding adequate.
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> ...49. Even if we could cut the average age to 30 years-old, ...
Just looked at the quote we received from our insurance broker, and the multiplier for 30 years-old is 1.135 versus 1.706 for 49 years-old where 24 years-old has a multiplier of 1. So you pay about 50% more in your case.
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Which amounts to about 2% ot total compensation.
What were the types of jobs? (Score:2)
I had heard they were closing down some factories in the past few years. Could it just be that they had a lot of older line workers?
How many young people fired does it take to prove this allegation wrong?
Sounds liek an investigation, no evidence yet (Score:2)
We can draw no conclusions merely from knowing the median age. The older employees probably probably made more money and received more benefits. Money is certainly part of the calculations for layoffs. There is also a greater chance that they were out-of-date making their cost/benefit ratio lower. Counterbalance that with the fact that companies often prefer to layoff younger workers to reward years of service. So the determination of who to layoff is quite complex, but it certainly involves many facto
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Good point about pay. Higher paid employees are easier targets when doing layoffs.
For us, it was hours worked. We let nearly every dev go that was working less than 60 hours a week. Of course, that skewed to a higher average age. Someone complained to the state DoL about that, and when we explained the metric used, we never heard back from them. I assume that meant using hours worked was a acceptable metric even when it appeared to result in age discrimination.
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For us, it was hours worked. We let nearly every dev go that was working less than 60 hours a week.
You are stealing from your employees.
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We let nearly every dev go that was working less than 60 hours a week
Basically you kept those who needed more time to finish their tasks. What could possibly go wrong?
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Re:Sounds liek an investigation, no evidence yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Experienced workers are more likely to be resistant to "culture and process change" because they've been down that road before and seldom seen it actually result in meaningful changes. At best its a workable rearrangement of existing process, at worst its a distortion of the process that makes it worse.
Younger and less experienced workers are more likely to fall for a charismatic sales pitch, not knowing that the changes will probably be a net zero change at best, or believe they have something to gain by attaching themselves to a "change agent" and their agenda.
These days these process changes seem even worse than in the past because they so often seem to be tied to just generating more data for managers vs. any actual improvement in work product or work process.
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Are you saying that you dismissed *every* employee that did not work at least 60 hours per week, and kept *every* employee that did?
Because if not, then hours worked was not the only criteria, although that was the only criteria you told the DoL that you used.
And if that's the case, then it follows that it may be entirely possible that hours worked was not even a criteria at all, but that you would have deliberately lied about it to the DoL knowing that it would skew the results in the direction that a
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I have to say, I'm more than a little impressed at the brass balls you must have had to do this if that's what you actually did.
Lying to labor officials about layoff criteria doesn't seem that risky. For the most part, unless there's substantial proof of sexual discrimination (against women) or racial discrimination (against blacks, really) I don't think state labor agencies really have much authority or power.
For the most part, beefs with employers are outsourced to the legal system. If a lawyer thinks you have a case worth contingency you might get someplace.
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Ha ha! You don't wanna work 60 hours a week, a third of it for no pay!
L0053r!!!
Not enough data (Score:2)
Maybe Intel is an evil company that likes to cast off older workers, just to make them suffer.
Or, maybe Intel was merely closing down some older and no-longer-profitable business units from the 1980s that happen to have been staffed with workers that hired on in the 80s.
Or, maybe Intel was merely flattening their management structure, laying off managers and keeping the engineers, thus disproportionally impacting manager who also happen to be older, on average.
Or, maybe there was some combination of t
Re:Not enough data (Score:5, Informative)
Being one of those affected by this action, I have a little insight to this topic. Sure, I also have a little bit of a bias.
This was not a case of closing a factory, nor of flattening management structures. Intel has gone through those multiple times, and as painful as they were, they were not like what happened in 2015 and 2016. In the recent disputed cases, managers were told from upper management to fire that one and that one and that one, with no choice or input from the direct or 2nd or even 3rd line of management. In my experience, these targeted folks came from many different divisions, and the prevailing similarities were that we were all older white males. Our managers were extremely unhappy that they had to let us go, and if it were merely a cost issue, would love to have traded out for other employees.
To respond to one of the earlier comments above: most of these positions had absolutely nothing to do with Java or Python, thank you very much.
It will happen to every techie someday (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire tech industry is built on an endless supply of cheap, young fresh grads who are easily convinced that low salaries and grueling work weeks are the norm. As those grads gain experience, they demand more salary and a more flexible life and will reach a point where employers will find a way to get rid of them.
It's not fair to paint everyone over a certain age as a dinosaur. I've seen many freshly minted MBAs explicitly say they don't want resumes of anyone who "looks over 40." This is due to a widely held stereotype that the only people who understand technology subjects are in their 20s, and the 30s are the time to start planning retirements. Everyone in the first stages of their career deriding older workers should bear in mind that this problem will eventually claim them unless they're very lucky and stay on the cutting edge every day of their lives.
Losing a job in your 50s in tech usually means you won't be working in the field again, so I'm not surprised that these workers are trying to get an age discrimination settlement. Imagine you're 53 and can't access your retirement accounts until you're 59.5, and can't get Social Security until you're 62. If no one will hire you, you're dead. I've seen this happen to many people since our company tends to skew older.
No Country For Graybeards (Score:5, Insightful)
Software is viewed as a disposable product with a limited lifespan. Therefore, building it poorly is OK, because it's gonna be replaced in a few years anyway. Therefore, hiring a young person for cheap to build it is fine; it just has to work well enough to ship.
Except, of course, the above premises are almost never true. That backfill script you wrote for the one-off run to add data? It will morph into a nightly task. That snippet of code where you hard coded a few strings? It will become the primary limiter to your entire pipeline architecture.
I'd have thought that after all the study and work done over the years that folks would have figured this out, at least to some extent.
But what baffles me the most is how the software discipline is the only one that truly reviles age and experience. In every other math, logic, and scientific discipline, it is a known that experience almost always means better results, and the ability to teach and mentor those who come after. In this discipline, it is not unusual to be considered over the hill at 30.
It boggles the mind.
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It boggles the mind.
Furthermore, can people actually blame women for not getting into programming? The fact that women stay out of programming or CS (or similar field) doesn't mean there is any kind of bias against them, it means that they're intelligent and smart
The SJWs don't know what they're talking about.
Xyz (Score:2)
However, an Intel spokesperson categorically denied that age played a role.
"We didn't discriminate against older employees," said Cody McYoungling, 27.
From an Intel Employee (Score:3)
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I worked at Intel in 2016. I luckily walked away before the big layoff
Explain something to me, what makes you lucky there?
I considered myself lucky to be part of layoffs. The tax advantages alone are incredible to say nothing of the government mandated payout. My own record was working at a company 1 day before the project got canned and I was made redundant. I have never earned so much for doing so little in so short of a time.
Do workers not get any protections in layoffs in the USA? No tax benefits? No payouts? No madatory benefits valued and paid? No pension contribution?
Go figure (Score:2)
So Happy That I Danced Out The Door of Intel (Score:3)
I was so happy that I was given the buy-out that I danced like a ballerina in the hallways of Intel's Jones Farm Campus as I left and started my retirement to Bellingham, Washington.
Here is the link to a video re-enactment of my behavior during my last days at Intel's Jones Farm Campus in Hillsboro, Oregon Mark Allyn as a Plastic Wrapped Ballerina Auditioning For The Nutcracker At Intel [youtube.com]
So happy to dance and sing in front of Slashdot's community!
They missed a W.... (Score:2)
I think you'll find this is Wage not Age discrimination.
Typically in these huge companies, when they decide to make a round of layoffs there's no analysis done on who is meat and fat in the company (trimming only the fat). The process goes usually....
Big exec goes.... hmmm I need to cut half a billion from the payroll? Easy !
Ring ring...
Exec: hey DBguy (in the payroll office) can you do a quick query for me?
DBguy: Sure....
Exec: if you take the highest paying employee in every department excluding top exec
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Sometimes keeping up with the latest tech is irrelevant. My dad worked with COBOL for 20+ years and lost his job in a round of layoffs where he had to train his replacement, a younger dude that knew nothing of COBOL.
Besides, asshat, this is Intel. Knowledge of the latest JS hotness probably isn't going to help anyone there.
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he had to train his replacement
Moral of the story: never train your replacement.
I don't care about two weeks of extra pay or whatever else they're offering. Why help your boss fire you?
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Were the olders given the opportunity to accept it?
we don't have single payer health care so some (Score:2)
we don't have single payer health care so some where deemed to cost to much to keep on.
the h1b was willing to work 80+ hours for 70K! (Score:2)
the h1b was willing to work 80+ hours for 70K!
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Animated GIFs.
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If you came into our workplace not knowing a Java framework like Spring, not knowing Hibernate, and still using Java 1.2 practices, I'd have zero use for you.
What's a Java?
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I guess that's true, these days knowing Java is irrelevant since no one actually programs in Java, instead they use frameworks to glue together other people's frameworks.
I never really learned Java, since every time I tried to pick it up again, the language style had changed so much it felt like I was learning from scratch.
Re:Or did they not keep up with technology? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Bob, we need you to rewrite the payroll system in the latest advancements in Java."
"You fucking morons don't realize that :
A. It will take 5 times longer to process.
B. It won't be compatible with our accounting software.
C. It probably won't comply with regulatory requirements.
Oh, and BTW, when 10,000 people get fucked up paychecks or no paychecks at all, I'll tell the board it was because you wanted to have the latest and greatest stuff."
"...Bob, umm...never mind."
Seriously, fucking with shit that works and replacing it with unproven stuff, is a waste of time and irresponsible. Shit like that can bring a company down.
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I'm playing the game where no one under 40 understands how to actually program on bare metal anymore.
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Funny Hibernate story: I joined a project that was using Hibernate. Fairly smart devs, not DB savvy. They had a routine to clear a table in the database. Yep... they loaded up each row as an object, and deleted that object. Because heck, you had Hibernate, it was evil to directly access the database.
Duh.
Re:Or did they not keep up with technology? (Score:5, Insightful)
Were these 50 somethings dinosaurs who never kept up with the latest tech and still coded in Fortran?
Stay with the times or go extinct. I have a feeling this has nothing to do with age discrimination.
You're talking out of your ass. And it's the excuse that is used - along with "they don't have the skills" or "they don't fit in".
Total bullshit. 100% bullshit. And it's just an excuse to to get around the EEOC laws with impunity.
As my retired CIO supervisor at my volunteer IT job says, "It's not right, but when candidates of similar skills are presented, we will go with the younger one." (And this VOLUNTEER job means NOTHING to recruiters!!)
What's similar? Well those laundry list of skills are just a distraction.
So, Mr. Fellow AC, you keep telling yourself that those old losers are just inept and keep sleeping at night.
How do I know? I was once like you at IBM in the early 1990s when Gerstner was cleaning house.
We - young punks - laughed at all those mainframe losers from NY who were sent down to Boca to work on OS/2 Warp. Hummpf! Old timer losers!
They busted their ass. And they laughed at our memory problems saying, "Uh, we solved this in 360. Look at IBM's patents."
But no.....we (I) were cocking young assholes who thought WE were beyond such things. We had the SKILZ! and we'd ALWAYS keep up!
And we did! I spent quite a few thousand dollars a year on books, class, and courses to stay ahead.
It makes no difference. I even had one asshole say that, "If you didn't go to Stanford, then you are no good - old man."
So, punk - shove it! Your day is coming!
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You're missing the point completely.
For example, my read of this statement:
They busted their ass. And they laughed at our memory problems saying, "Uh, we solved this in 360. Look at IBM's patents."
is that the old timers were saying, "We already solved this - go and look. Make it easy on yourself."
And as far as "studying the latest technologies" - who, exactly, do you think is building the new technologies that you cut your teeth on?
Re:Or did they not keep up with technology? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think there really is any, "Latest Technologies".
There is the latest regurgitation of technologies, Rearranged, Renamed, and Refactored, but it's always the same stuff, just in different costumes.
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Your ignorance of the value of experience is stunning.
I hope that you yourself are not a developer. Because if you aren't, then said ignorance is forgivable; if you are, however, then you are certainly a part of the problem.
Grow up. Learn to do the right thing. Teach others to do the same. It actually can lead to a rewarding, successful, and lucrative career.
Or not. In which case, you'll probably be replaced in the next few years by a younger version of yourself who is gung ho to generate copious amoun
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No. If your manager says "we need to do X" and it's something new, they want someone who can learn how to do X. Which you know, devs who have been around a while and seen a lot can do. Unlike some younger ones who think that a web app is the end all and be all of existence.
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BS. Utter BS. You really think that older devs can't or won't learn things? Heck, when someone starts talking about some exciting new development, it usually reminds me of something I was doing 20 years ago.
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"Everything" requires a responsive design pattern or needs to be mobile? I've never done web or mobile development and I'm still working and get way too many emails and phone calls from recruiters.
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It all comes down to money. Why keep paying these guys high salaries when fresh college grads will do the work for a fraction?
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Thankfully, it does all come back around to the firing/hiring managers when legacy systems start to fail for lack of maintenance and knowledge of those systems. Ultimately the stock holders end up taking it on the chin as IT costs go up and service goes down.
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Why keep paying these guys high salaries when fresh college grads will do the work for a fraction?
Because they have more experience.
Despite their many virtues, fresh college grads still need adult supervision and mentoring.
Re:Or did they not keep up with technology? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why keep paying these guys high salaries when fresh college grads will do the work for a fraction?
Because they have more experience.
Despite their many virtues, fresh college grads still need adult supervision and mentoring.
Real-life example. We had three software products to deliver to the Government every quarter - Solaris SPARC, X86 and Firmware patches. Each took a week to research, generate and package manually and was usually done by the newest, youngest, cheapest, and least experience team member. I worked with him one cycle (I was his mentor) and wrote a Perl script that automated almost the entire process enough to produce all three products in one afternoon.
Guess who they laid off?
Of course, they laid off their most experience Perl programmer, so I'm not sure who's maintaining my script, but it's not my problem anymore.
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Depends on whether you want it done right or not.
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Actually, this can already happen. There is no law barring discrimination based on personal appearance. Nor should there be.
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They didn't fire them for being old. They fired them for remembering the Pentium 2 floating point bug.
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Salary tends to be higher as one ages, and they can pay younger hires much less.
Much Much Less.
Oh, wait, that's age discrimination on both sides.
From my experience, there is a reason for paying the younger people less - they are worth less.
I do know it was shocking for the millenials who had just graduated to find out I knew a lot more then they did. They usually had one aspect they were semi competent in while I could work every position in the department. Which by the way is hella good job security.
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By that logic it's older people's fault for expecting more money than they are worth to the company, resulting in them getting laid off.
The real issue is that there is no progression any more. All you can do is keep switching jobs, and if you fail to switch for too long you become too expensive and get laid off.
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You added a space in worthless
Brutal! Well played sir - well played indeed!