IBM Accused of Violating Federal Anti-Age Discrimination Law (propublica.org) 127
A group of ex-employees filed a lawsuit that accuses the tech giant of failing to comply with a law requiring companies to disclose the ages of people over 40 who have been laid off. The suit also alleges that the company has improperly prevented workers from combining to challenge their ousters. From a report: It is the second broad legal action against IBM since a 2018 ProPublica story that documented widespread age discrimination by the company in its global restructuring. The former employees are asking the court to invalidate a written agreement that IBM requires its employees to sign to receive severance pay. Under the document's provisions, workers agree to give up any right to challenge their dismissal in court. Until now, most age-related legal actions contesting an IBM layoff have been brought by the rare ex-worker who refused to sign the agreement and left without severance.
If the district court were to agree that IBM's separation agreement is invalid, it could open the company up to lawsuits by tens of thousands of older workers IBM has laid off in recent years. Today's lawsuit and the string of other cases filed in the wake of ProPublica's story face steep odds as a result of decisions by the Supreme Court and federal appeals courts that curtailed workers' ability to challenge employers' staffing decisions. The rationale is to limit what federal judges view as cumbersome, costly cases that hamstring both employers and the courts.
If the district court were to agree that IBM's separation agreement is invalid, it could open the company up to lawsuits by tens of thousands of older workers IBM has laid off in recent years. Today's lawsuit and the string of other cases filed in the wake of ProPublica's story face steep odds as a result of decisions by the Supreme Court and federal appeals courts that curtailed workers' ability to challenge employers' staffing decisions. The rationale is to limit what federal judges view as cumbersome, costly cases that hamstring both employers and the courts.
I got news for them... (Score:2, Interesting)
It ain't just IBM. Shall we take a look at the average employee age at Facebook? Google? People over 50 don't get interviews, don't get hired, and are the first out the door when the layoffs come. I thank god every day that I went into stodgy defense work, where young people generally don't want to work and being over 50 is not seen as a deal breaker (my PhD probably doesn't hurt either), and I've had 25 years of steady employment.
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It ain't just IBM. Shall we take a look at the average employee age at Facebook? Google? People over 50 don't get interviews, don't get hired, and are the first out the door when the layoffs come. I thank god every day that I went into stodgy defense work, where young people generally don't want to work and being over 50 is not seen as a deal breaker (my PhD probably doesn't hurt either), and I've had 25 years of steady employment.
It's sad really. No amount of schooling can even dream of surpassing experience. Here in Denmark we actually see the opposite - 5-10 years of 'relevant experience' is a requirement in many tech job openings. They don't care about school diplomas, only experience. I've never had so many recruiters hunt me since I passed the 50-mark; I get perhaps 4-5 requests each week but I recently took the bait in one and jumped - and now I've been in my current job for 2 months. Better pay, better benefits and the age of
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Re:I got news for them... (Score:5, Insightful)
As people age, their salary expectations increase, but often their skills don't.
If they were really as valuable as they think they are, then some enterprising company should be able to hire them all and out-compete the companies staffed by younglings. Obviously, that isn't happening.
Most people don't get old and wise. They just get old.
Said the guy who's under 40. What you don't realize is that with age comes perspective. What you think is some great hot idea, an experienced guy can tell you why it's a bad idea and poke holes in the concept.
I didn't even get in on Slashdot when it was fresh, yet my user ID should tell you how old I am.
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They can afford to do 14 hour days at the office as no-one is going to miss them at home.
If you need to pull 14 hour days at the office then either you or your boss has no fucking clue of what they are doing. You cannot make up quality with quantity. So besides an occasional emergency if this is happening you are in the wrong job, or your company is clueless. Either one is an indication to make sure your CV is up to date and look for something else.
Re:I got news for them... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not supported by evidence. Nearly all successful tech companies skew young. If oldsters were really so valuable, then where are the successful companies cashing in on that value by scooping up the seniors?
Because they want slaves not employees. Its also worth noting that tagging along with the latest fad writing throw away apps isn't exactly technically demanding.
You'll also notice that successful startups often end up re-writing their entire codebase to fix the poor decisions of their early employees.
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You'll also notice that successful startups often end up re-writing their entire codebase to fix the poor decisions of their early employees.
That is the smart thing to do. You move fast, get the product out the door, and fix it later after you are funded.
Meanwhile, the perfectionist geezer is still whining about improper indentation 5 years after the market window closed.
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I suspect you're arguing with a troll. Either that or he's never heard of the google. I find it especially interesting that when the oldsters went out, the evil started coming in. At least that's how it looks.
However mostly I wanted to chant "Hear, hear" on the reference to (wage) slaves. The employers' idea is to keep the employees divided and conquered. There are a few exceptional superstars (and the company needs such leaders to seed any dominant position), but mostly they prefer the cheapest round peg t
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Do you mean the way geezers on Slashdot panned the iPhone, and insisted that Facebook was going nowhere?
Let's not forget they also panned VRML 20 years ago (and they were right), and I recall saying on slashdot at least around 2012 that the whole "autonomous cars are five years away" is complete vapourware (and I was right there too).
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They problem is that they pan everything. Most tech products fail, so if you say "that will never work" to everything, you will be right 90% of the time, but you will also miss the 10% that make up for the failures a hundred times over.
Like they say on Wall Street: Bears sound smart. Bulls make money.
Re:I got news for them... (Score:4, Insightful)
They problem is that they pan everything. Most tech products fail, so if you say "that will never work" to everything, you will be right 90% of the time, but you will also miss the 10% that make up for the failures a hundred times over.
If the failure kills you then you aren't around to reap the 1-in-10 success - plenty of startups that never made the news went all-in on autonomous cars and are out of money before anyone actually solves the problem.
The problem is survivor bias - you're looking at the survivors all having the same characteristic (risk taking, for example) and concluding that **that** is the reason for their success, while the reality is that all the failures had the exact same characteristic too.
You're making this argument:
"All the people who survived $DISEASE took $MEDS".
"So? All the ones who didn't also took $MEDS".
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Re:I got news for them... (Score:5, Insightful)
If oldsters were really so valuable
Remember these words. 20 years go by faster than you think. Read them again in 20 years and let me know how smart you think you were when you wrote them.
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Read them again in 20 years and let me know how smart you think you were when you wrote them.
In 20 years, I won't be wiser, just more self-interested.
Of course old people see themselves as valuable.
Their problem is that nobody else sees it that way.
Name a single successful tech company started by an over-50.
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> Name a single successful tech company started by an over-50.
How about E-Trade? Bill Porter, age 54.
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It does not make sense to have a senior-level employee doing entry-level work.
You are assuming that old==senior-level.
Your level should be based on your ability, not your age.
You need SOME senior level talent.
Sure, but IBM is laying off the chaff not the wheat.
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I'm not saying that these people are "bad", but they're not self-correcting. Their errors amplify over time if someone isn't there to constantly compensate for them.
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Hear, hear.
As far as the lawsuit goes, where do I sign up?
They actually started pushing me towards the exit around 55. My theory is that their problem was that I had too many friends in higher places, as in it had always amused me to help other people get promoted even though I was basically irreplaceable and therefore unpromotable. (Not to say that no one else could have done my work. It was just (office) politically impossible to hire anyone else.) My final managers still went rather far out of their way
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I didn't even get in on Slashdot when it was fresh, yet my user ID should tell you how old I am.
Missed the Chips & Dip phase did we? ;)
Noob! Oh wait, for that time frame, it was still newb. Sorry.
Reminds me of the time . . . (Score:2)
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You can manage a good bit of that risk by picking and choosing which government agency/department you work in. Even during a shutdown a very large part of the work force continues to work and get paid. I think only about a third of the workforce was not working in he last shutdown.
Speaking of pay it isn't all that great if you live in an expensive part of the country. In places where the cost of living is more normal though the pay can seem pretty generous. The other benefits like 4 hours of sick leave per
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It very much depends on the locality and circumstances. I had a supervisor once that was hired away from a GS spot because they offered him twice the pay. I've known others for whom moving to GS was a significant immediate raise. I work with some technical people that are well payed enough as contractors that they would have to be upper management if they were hired on as a GS.
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for doing the same job.
If you're still doing the same job at the end of your career as at the beginning, then you've been doing it wrong and aren't worth more than what they're paying you.
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As people age, their salary expectations increase, but often their skills don't.
If they were really as valuable as they think they are, then some enterprising company should be able to hire them all and out-compete the companies staffed by younglings. Obviously, that isn't happening.
Most people don't get old and wise. They just get old.
Competition in the business environment isn't solely based on competence but also impacts on business, such as operating costs. It could very well be that hiring minimally competent, cheap workers is more competitive for a company than hiring more expensive, more competent workers. This is especially true when decisions are made by executives motivated by short-term stock incentives, which is often the case. For such companies, the sweet spot is hiring minimally competent workers at the lowest price. In
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IBM has been around for over a century. They are no longer a major tech powerhouse like they once were, but that is not because they hired young innovative people. Quite the opposite, they sat on their laurels and missed one opportunity after another because of a failure to adapt and an ossified workforce.
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Many of your aging employees are skilled and / or subject matter experts in older technology that is still in use, but no one wants to work on because it's not the " New Hotness " thing of the Month.
While you state the older crowd's skills don't improve with age, I would wager the younger crowds skills with older tech are even more lacking.
Let's use where I work as an example. ( Massive company: ~$170 B Annual Revenue for 2018 )
No new hire wants to work on, learn or even hear about X.25 Protocol or any te
Ok it's better to say we did not follow H1B laws a (Score:3)
Ok it's better to say we did not follow H1B laws and layed off USC's just to replace them with H1B's
Also level 1 help desk is master's degree preferred (and the pay is no where near any thing to cover the loans for that)
IF we only had an UNION!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
If we only had an UNION!!!!
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Unions are only found in free countries, they're collective bargaining and collective rights enforcement by citizen laborers. Union DUES are somewhat controversial (to some retards like yourself) but the union itself is not.
Union labor is why America still has a middle class that Republican trolls have allowed to be choked nearly to death. You just don't even realize you're a traitor for multi-national corporatist globalists to use as their tool.
You're oblivious to it, and it's clear you don't have a job
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at 4:55 on Friday.
Hello Peter what's happening. I'm gonna need you to go ahead and come in tomorrow. So if you could be here at around....9 that'd be great. and before I forget I need you to come in on sunday as well.
Re: IF we only had an UNION!!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Boy, things sure are great for us ununionized Silicon Valley workers!
* Pay that hasn't risen in more than a decade, while cost of living more than doubled. Check!
* Long hours with no overtime. Check!
* No time off. Check!
* No job security. Check!
* No career development path. Check!
* No autonomy. Check!
* Always managed by nepotists with no technical background. Check!
* Preposterously one-sided "contacts", required by every employer. Check!
* Replaced by lawfully-imported H1B scabs at every opportunity. Check!
*
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And the decomposing flesh of things they've killed.
Who does layoffs well? (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in the '90s, when I worked at IBM, I was appalled at the people they let go. Age was clearly a factor, followed by the number of letters behind a person's name. Up to that point in time, the company had been incredibly successful and never had to consider layoffs before, so the primary decision point was literally who had a full retirement followed by degrees, type and where are they from. Guess how many mainframe system admins were over 50 with only high school? The damage done to the company was incredible and measurable.
Now, being older and wiser, I have seen many, many layoffs from different companies with no clear criteria or thought to what would happen after the layoffs were complete - they're generally done to bring quarterly costs into line with investor's expectations with little lip service being put to only keeping the most productive employees.
So, while I can see the reason for tracking the demographics of who a company fires is important, I'm not aware of any cases where layoffs improved the long term health of the company or that any demographic study would show that the layoffs were done in a strategic and effective manner.
Re: Who does layoffs well? (Score:2)
Luckily for IBM they deal with people that don't have a clue what they want and are quite happy to pay huge sums for some garbage written by IBM's offshore teams..
Re:Who does layoffs well? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, being older and wiser, I have seen many, many layoffs from different companies with no clear criteria or thought to what would happen after the layoffs were complete - they're generally done to bring quarterly costs into line with investor's expectations with little lip service being put to only keeping the most productive employees.
So, while I can see the reason for tracking the demographics of who a company fires is important, I'm not aware of any cases where layoffs improved the long term health of the company or that any demographic study would show that the layoffs were done in a strategic and effective manner.
This is AT&T right now.
The most recent round of layoffs were determined by a single metric. Your physical office location.
If you work outside of company declared " Collaboration Zones " your continued employment is questionable at best.
Your skillset or value you bring to the company is irrelevant.
Years of experience and / or wisdom in technology X or subject matter ( still in use by the Telco ) also irrelevant.
Entire Teams were wiped out and the work they were doing is now sitting idle piling up because no one is left to deal with it.
The company doesn't fully understand the damage they have done yet but, make no mistake about it, it will come back to bite them.
The company hasn't disclosed neither how many nor who they have let go. We find out when we try to call a colleague about day to day
business and learn they were let go.
Personally, I kick around the idea that the Collaboration Zones are merely a smokescreen for the true nature of the layoffs. That being the
reduction of older / high seniority employees whose benefit packages are grandfathered in vs a new hire. ( Translation: They cost more )
The scary part ?
This is only the first round of layoffs this year. More are coming.
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You took the job.
What AT&T is, is not a secret.
You should be actively attempting to escape (any company run by former AT&T execs, not just the one with the name).
The phenomenon is a corollary of the peter principle, the name of which escapes me. 'When a person has reached their level of incompetence, at some level they know it. So they proceed to surround themselves with even _more_ incompetent people, so they can blend in." At AT&T the king idiot is the Chairman of the Board, he hires ot
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It's slightly more complicated.
I took the job . . . . . 20+ years ago when the company was SBC. Trust me when I tell you it was a much different company then and when they start you off at 2x the pay you were making in the military ( plus benefits ), you don't turn it down. They genuinely believed in a trained workforce and made sure their employees knew how to do their jobs.
Jump forward a bit.
SBC buys AT&T because their execs all but destroyed their own company and it appears they're well on their wa
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30 years...at various 'ma bell' children...that's horrific. Good luck dude.
They probably didn't cover their bases (Score:5, Interesting)
When Cisco laid me off at age 56, they did cover their bases. The layoff came with a stack of paper an inch thick with statistics of the ages of those laid off, showing they were fully prepared to defend themselves against any claim of age discrimination.
They also included a very generous severance package.
And, if you signed an agreement to not sue them for age discrimination, that very generous severance package became very *VERY* generous.
See point 1 above, they were fully prepared to defend themselves against any claim of age discrimination.
Hey, when I got home from getting laid off, right there in my Gmail inbox was an email from a recruiter at the place I'm currently working. The layoff turned out to be a rather substantial windfall.
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Well, reverse your thinking and imagine the fallout if companies fired all of their junior staff ( say anyone under 30 ) and replaced them with anyone over 30 for: Reasons. ( Now replace age with anything on the list the EEOC prohibits and you begin to understand why discrimination laws exist. )
Tip: You don't get to destroy someones life after twenty plus years simply because you want a younger ( read that: Cheaper ) workforce.
If you were laid off simply because of any EEOC qualifying reason, would you ha
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There are so many new college grads hungry for a job.
But why pay for a college grad when all they can do is about as well as some of our software or robots - if that. College grads know nothing of real value, they have simply been screened to meet a certain minimally acceptable standard - if that. Maybe I'd rather have a guy who has worked for a competitor for 20 years and understands the limitations of the robots and the software. He would be worth something.
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turning 40 (Score:1)
That is their MO (Score:2)
IBM Ages and Wages people out ALL THE TIME! If the numbers were ever publish about the age and salary of everyone they "layed off" you would see this. You won't see millennials being "layed off".... They are young and will work for cheap! Wait - most companies are starting to do this now....
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This is what happens when you have accountants running engineering departments, rather than engineers with accounting degrees (they are so fucking easy to do). So basically the accountants think the engineers are as dumb and readily replaceable as accountants, so treat engineers like accounting department hires, disposable, all pretty much equally useless but can type numbers in the right holes in a spreadsheet. Nett result company dies because it is staffed by cheap shitty engineers who produce really bad
IBM Has Been Firing Older Workers for Years (Score:5, Interesting)
Porn Stars on cruise ships? (Score:2)
Porn stars don't get fired. They get jobs singing adult contemporary pieces on cruise ships and mountain resorts
Man, I've got to get my wife to consider something other than Disney for our next vacation.