
IBM Is Being Sued for Age Discrimination After Firing Thousands - Deinos
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-17/ibm-is-being-sued-for-age-discrimination-after-firing-thousands
======
Soundest
It seems that every large company is guilty of this to some extent. I used to
work at Intel and they had this exact problem when they tried to shrink the
work force. The dynamic goes like this: Managers find it easier to use the
performance management tool to make everyone happy rather than to follow the
policies and procedures in place. So you end up with lots of quirks on an
individual level -- someone wants more pay and less stock so you stick them on
a low stock grant and high pay increase. Or the work in a given team simply
isn't that difficult and so as your traditional journeyman gains more
experience they get more expensive but not more useful- so they become at
risk.

Then HR comes in to do the mass headcount cut, look at performance reviews and
just cut all the people with low performance reviews. Because it's done on a
mass scale of 1,000s of people they really can't do it on a case by case
basis. The problem is that to safely fire staff you need to have treated them
fairly and that's where it all comes out of the woodwork. You put all the data
together and it turns out you've fired way more people over 50 because the
organisation is a pyramid and older workers aren't value for money at the
bottom of the pyramid and there's not many places at the top.

Obviously it's also true that if you can fire 10 older engineers on high
salaries lots of managers will choose to do that simply because it means they
don't need to fire 20 younger engineers. It's the easy option.

Not to mention the fact that if you've been at a company a long time you've
most likely had your salary rise during the good years and stay flat in the
bad years, either way when you get to a bad cycle again suddenly you look very
expensive to the organisation.

~~~
markbnj
Yeah I tend to think this is the more likely explanation, as opposed to the
idea that there is some ageist conspiracy at work. In any case, as a 57 year-
old working engineer it is somewhat against my nature to delegate
responsibility for my being able to make a living to any company. I learned a
long time ago to take responsibility for it myself by constantly staying
engaged, challenging myself, and learning new things. If I'm let go by an
organization for whatever reason I will have the skills needed to land a new
position, and I'd much rather spend my time keeping them sharp and acquiring
new ones than wondering why BigCorp (who I probably won't work for anyway)
didn't keep me around for the rest of my working life. The only security is
what you create for yourself, in my opinion.

~~~
notacoward
> as opposed to the idea that there is some ageist conspiracy at work

Any sufficiently common bias has the same effect as a conspiracy. While it's
very unlikely that IBM had an actual plan to eliminate older workers, because
that would be illegal and stupid, there could well have been enough culture
and cues leading to myriad "independent" actions with the same effect. Bias is
something that must be _actively_ countered.

> as a 57 year-old working engineer it is somewhat against my nature to
> delegate responsibility for my being able to make a living to any company

That's a very reasonable attitude, but irrelevant. Whether people have other
options or not does not change the fact that discrimination is wrong.

~~~
pathseeker
Not sure why you're trying to argue. OP was just explaining how it can happen
as an emergent behavior rather than requiring explicit intent to discriminate
against older people and then shared his/her strategy to fight it.

Then you were kind enough to just echo the initial part and call his/her
attitude irrelevant. Please read more carefully and don't be so hostile to
people offering their perspectives, particularly when they are in the very
class of victims under discussion.

~~~
notacoward
> OP was just explaining how it can happen as an emergent behavior

Incorrect. OP had set up an excluded middle between a conspiracy and an
emergent behavior unrelated to bias. I pointed out that it could still be bias
even if it's not coordinated.

> Then you were kind enough to just echo the initial part and call his/her
> attitude irrelevant.

I was calling _only that part_ irrelevant.

> they are in the very class of victims under discussion.

So am I, and that is also irrelevant. It simply doesn't matter whether you, I,
or s/he are in that group. It doesn't matter whether any of us, or the IBM
employees have alternative strategies. It only matters whether IBM
discriminated against them.

> Please read more carefully and don't be so hostile

Advice best taken yourself. I wasn't hostile to anyone, only to an argument
that had no place in this discussion. Please don't be so quick to take sides
and attribute ill intent to anyone who presents facts that don't support your
"perspective" on an objective question.

~~~
maiybe
This comment is ironic given your previous praise for Linus on acknowledging
his rude behavior towards other developers.

The language you're using is pretty abrasive and it can come off as quite
hostile even if you don't intend it. You also get defensive when someone
interacts with your easy-to-misinterpret comments and you gaslight them by
saying they shouldn't be quick to "take sides" about your ripe-for-
polarization statement.

Maybe you could take a queue from Linus. As you said in your own comment in
reference to Linus admitting he had an attitude: "Good for him. These are hard
things to admit, and he's setting a great example."

If I'm so lucky, I look forward to a quippy response about how that situation
is totally different.

~~~
projektir
I'm not sure what's abrasive about their comment.

If anything, it's a great example of direct-without-abusive, something I wish
folk like Linus would adopt.

------
ergothus
Years ago I read an article with a headline something like "So you think
you're indispensable?" \- it argued that if you don't have written affirmation
of your value, that value probably exists in places where those making firing
decisions won't see it. Since then I've made a point of making sure I get the
occasional kudo in writing, be that from my boss or a co-worker, and tack them
into any periodic evaluations. When someone thanks me for some extra effort I
can say "Happy to help, feel free to sing my praises to manager@example.com :)
".

It's annoying and shouldn't be necessary - but it's also fairly low effort
(lower effort than concocting fake annual "goals" to be striving towards when
our work changes more rapidly than that) and has given me comfort in more than
one "tight budget" situation at various companies. Anything low-effort that
keeps anxiety in check is worth it, and if it actually proves useful, then
bonus. Also, my managers tend to LIKE getting this written feedback from
others, because they can cut-and-paste it or refer to it in their evaluations,
which makes THEIR lives easier (no one likes evaluations).

It's one of the few clickbait-ey headlines that actually delivered, and I
recommend the same advice to anyone else.

~~~
kamaal
>>if you don't have written affirmation of your value, that value probably
exists in places where those making firing decisions won't see it.

>>When someone thanks me for some extra effort I can say "Happy to help, feel
free to sing my praises to manager@example.com :) ".

Many times people making lay off decisions have no idea who you are, or what
you have been doing. This is true in the case of mass lay offs. And they don't
exactly run a search on the company's email database to see who received the
accolades.

Its mostly political equations that come to play in these situations, not
merit.

~~~
ergothus
I think you misunderstood - I'm not getting entries in an "email database",
I'm getting evaluations so whatever scoring metric they use, I'll be listed as
above average. (And this doesn't necessarily contradict your cynicism
regarding political equations - unless EVERY position is decided politically,
a lot of positions will be evaluated by the metric that might have been
determined to aid those that are being politically protected - so if I have
the company "Ace awards" and evaluation scores that those people have, I too
get to keep my job, particularly in workplaces where you can challenge a
firing/demotion or are asked to provide support for getting a promotion/raise.

But safety is only part of the concept, it's more like "accuracy". More than
once I've been "the only one that knows XXX system" (and yes, that's bad, but
there are very few companies where that doesn't happen) - but that's a
statement that people on the ground know and people above don't. This sort of
approach reduces that disconnect.

Still though, nothing is 100%, this was just a low-effort option. If one
wishes to assume that nothing matters except the schmooze, go for it - I
prefer this option.

------
fipple
I actually find ageism to be one of the most overt forms of illegal
discrimination. People talk about how they are looking for young devs in a way
that would seem insane if they were talking about white devs or male.

~~~
stale2002
Ok, and what about discrimination against young people? I can assure that that
discrimination against young people is significantly more prevalent. It is
just wrapped up in pretty words about "experience" or "maturity".

Nobody seems to care about the 18 year who can produce a lot of good work, but
isn't likely to be paid even a third of what an equally capable 40 year old
makes. How is that fair?

~~~
codeonfire
Age Discrimination in Employment Act say discrimination doesn't become a
problem until age 40, therefore 40+ is a protected class. below 40 is not.

~~~
codeonfire
Lol you idiots downvoting. I learned this fact from a law professor/attorney.
You don't like it so you are downvoting? Lol. Go look it up on wikipedia, but
I think maybe if your are getting this emotional about a fact I learned in a
law class, then wikipedia may be too advanced.

~~~
dang
We've banned this account for violating the site guidelines and ignoring our
requests to stop.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and
give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
freddy418_sc
It looks to me like, in general, the bigger a company gets, the more the
"leadership" starts acting like they are running a hedge fund. The money
becomes more important than the product. Then when the product is de-
emphasized, the employees obviously lose their importance and then the
"leadership" start treating them like cattle to be moved from grazing location
to grazing location. I put "leadership" in quotes because they somehow tend to
be managers, who never actually built anything, who are clueless about the
nuances of the product.

~~~
Someguywhatever
IBM has been dead since the 90's. Back when Lou Gerstner supposedly "saved"
IBM from death he actually didn't, back then Real IBM the thing we think of as
IBM actually died, and instead Zombie IBM took it's place (zIBM). zIBM is run
as you say, like a hedge fund. Making products is incidental to zIBM and it
doesn't care what it makes as long as somebody will pay (so it doesn't care if
it's products are good or even usable). zIBM also implemented this infamous
stack ranking system, the executives are terrible, and there are so many
layers between management and action on the ground that the left hand has no
idea what the right hand is doing.

Management is so insulated from whats actually happening by all these layers
nobody can effectively steer the organization, there are so many divisions and
people that nobody can really track what is happening. The only thing that
zIBM is actually really good at is managing its share price, and crafting it's
artisinal financial statements so that nobody actually has any idea how bad
it's doing. But we all know that zIBM revenue is declining for almost 10
years, so it's going to be a long slow crawl to zIBMs true final fiscal death.

~~~
owenversteeg
I agree. Meanwhile, the IBM stock is up 1,320% since 1993. At one point it was
nearly 2,000%.

That's the problem with playing the stock market: you've not only got to be
right, you've got to be right at the exact right time or you'll get
slaughtered.

~~~
Someguywhatever
IBM are really masters at managing their share price, with buybacks and
strategic announcements (like Watson), ultimately they still only make
mainframes and support legacy products mostly. Nobody really uses their
second-rate cloud. So mainframes/services and dragging out government
contracts are really where it's at for them.

------
notacoward
Good. Much like all the other "isms" ageism is rarely overt but still exists
and has real effects. Leave policies and on-call schedules are tuned to make
life difficult for those who have to deal with their own or family members'
medical conditions. Offices are designed to be disproportionately unpleasant
for those who have undergone well known age-related changes in hearing and
vision. IBM seems to have gone with the tried and true approach of laying
people off based on proxies for age, just as others hire using proxies for
race or social class, with "skills" as the shorthand. They'd better be
prepared to explain exactly what criteria they used to decide which skills
were valuable, how skill levels were evaluated, and how they concluded that
layoffs and subsequent replacement hires were preferable to internal transfers
(with or without retraining). It's a good thing that more companies are being
held accountable for practicing this form of discrimination.

------
jl2718
One thing that concerns me more than ageism is the tendency to retain
management while refreshing engineers. Bad management will always fail no
matter what the engineering skill is.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
This. It freaking kills me that management always gets to stay and engineers
get the axe. What makes it worse is these places always talk about loyalty
like it means anything at all to engineers. Loyalty seems to only work one
way.

~~~
iamdave
> Loyalty seems to only work one way.

The asymmetry of relational power between employer and employee/job-seeker and
job-creator has gotten so bad in the American work force it should probably be
studied as a real economic indicator.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
So, you support communism?

Yep, Ive heard that. I only wish it were sarcasm. Questioning anything about
capitalism and how it fails people is the ultimate taboo. Sure, you are
allowed to grouse about it as lower class, but 'that was brought upon
yourself'... It always is, in a system like ours.

~~~
prolikewh0a
I've heard that too and I have to remind people that there's nothing in the US
constitution against implementing some far left checks on capitalism to keep
the worker/employer relationship fair and equal.

I hear so many stories from the 90's and early 00's about how wonderful the
corporate environments I now work in were great places to work with great
benefits, happy workers, constant raises and opportunities for bonuses, some
people even got a guaranteed $1 yearly raise. Now some grandfathered people
that have been here that long are making $50-60/hr for a job they now pay
$25/hr for. That environment is long gone and it seems things are only getting
worse on a daily basis unless you're a Software Engineer and I don't doubt the
hammer will come down on them soon as well.

~~~
iamdave
_d it seems things are only getting worse on a daily basis unless you 're a
Software Engineer and I don't doubt the hammer will come down on them soon as
well._

Why would you joke about something like that?
([https://giphy.com/gifs/YVBC4HdSpB7z2](https://giphy.com/gifs/YVBC4HdSpB7z2))

I've actually been working towards making an exit from tech-actually part of
that preparation is lowering my living expenses because it's going to come
with a substantial drop in annual income to pursue the goals I'm pivoting
towards.

Which, I'm actually fine with because I'm envisioning and plotting for a
substantial QOL upgrade, or at least an upgrade to the mental stress doing
what I've wanted to since the start.

------
sillyquiet
Ooh, tricky.

Is it a case of corporate douchebaggery, hiring recent grads at half the
salary of the veterans and then laying off the veterans? Or is it 'lay off the
fogeys that can't let go of Fortran 77 long enough to learn Java or JS or C#'
I've seen both circumstances in my career. Given that it's IBM, I am inclined
towards the former.

~~~
mandelbrotwurst
Is that first example age discrimination? In that case it sounds like they're
discriminating based on what salary the workers are willing to accept and not
their age.

~~~
sillyquiet
No it's not illegal, in my not-a-labor-lawyer opinion. Just douchebaggery that
should possibly be illegal. It's only undisputedly illegal if they refused to
hire new devs based on age alone. Or if they used age as their metric for
letting people go, but why would they do that, since they undoubtedly know
what folks make. I do think though that this douchebaggery would have a
disproportionate impact on older folks, just give years of experience = higher
salary and all that.

~~~
sokoloff
Are you saying that it should be illegal/possibly illegal/DB to make
layoff/firing decisions taking salary heavily into account?

To me, a layoff is about trimming expenses and retaining the maximum
value/output per dollar of future total salary.

If that means that person A is (perceived to be) more valuable per dollar
spent on salary than person B, person A should be more likely to be retained.
Why should that be illegal (or even judged to be DB behavior)?

In theory, a company is paying a person to deliver value, not simply to have
been stably at the company (or in their career or "be old"), right? (If
context matters, I'm 47 and so "old" by some measures...)

~~~
ryandrake
If you’re just laying off people based on salary divided by value, the CEO
would often be the first to go, purely because the numerator is orders of
magnitude larger than everyone else. Some CEOs make 1000+ times what their
median employee makes. Are they really 1000x more productive?

~~~
sokoloff
If the VCs have funded and believe in that particular CEO, maybe...

Is Elon Musk worth 1000x the value of a randomly selected Tesla employee to
Tesla? I think probably so. (Compare the market cap impact of Elon's sudden
departure or incapacitation to that of another randomly chosen employee as
just one proxy.)

~~~
lexs
This also depends on your definition of value. Sure Elon is good for promotion
and endlessly raising funds, but how do you compare that to actually
engineering the product, producing it etc.

~~~
sokoloff
If Tesla (or any other company that's burning cash at a prodigious rate)
doesn't keep raising money, there is no more company.

~~~
lexs
If Tesla (or any other company) doesn't keep producing products, there is no
more company? I realise that raising capital is necessary but my point was
that both aspects of the company are "valuable" and that it is hard to say yes
person X is definitely 1000x more valuable although they are working in
different departments.

------
chadash
> _“Changes in our workforce are about skills, not age,” Ed Barbini, a
> spokesman for IBM said in an emailed statement._

I'm assuming this is just an excuse and it has more to do with the fact that
their older workers have higher salaries. But would the defense "we fired
older workers because they were paid more" hold up in court?

edit: I'll answer my own question. According to an article I found [1]:

> _The United States Supreme Court has held that an employer does not violate
> the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 621-634, by acting on
> the basis of a factor, such as an employees’ pension status, seniority or
> salary, that is empirically correlated with age._

[1] [https://aaronhall.com/does-being-fired-because-of-your-
salar...](https://aaronhall.com/does-being-fired-because-of-your-salary-
constitute-age-discrimination/)

~~~
notacoward
You left out an important word. The SC has held that an employer does not
_automatically_ violate the ADEA etc. As your own source continues:

"Age discrimination may exist, however, where an employer terminates an
employee based on a factor such as experience or salary where the employer
presupposes a correlation with age and uses that factor as a proxy for age."

That is in fact what ultimately happened with Hazen, by the way. The use of
proxy criteria as a facade for discrimination has been addressed in many other
discrimination/quota cases, and courts routinely see right through it. So the
answer to your question is basically no, unless the employer can prove that
they were more than normally oblivious to the disparate effect their choices
would have. I don't think any of IBM's lawyers are likely to suggest such a
defense.

------
mancerayder
It seems our jobs are a double-edged sword.

Unlike professionals like doctors, lawyers, and many accredited within their
professions, we don't need degrees. I certainly don't have a stem degree, and
many of my friends, some of whom make a third to half a million dollars in the
Northeast of the US (not SV), don't have any college degrees at all.

We're able to learn and shift, going from developer to sysadmin, architect,
manager or security professional and back again. Pre-sales anyone?

We can choose relaxed, helpful-to-society non-profit companies, mean, 24/7
work ethic startups with monthly death marches, low-salary beer keg outfits
with bright colored furniture, boring investment banks or many other.

We have a sort of highly competitive meritocracy where I can go home and learn
something I happen to know is hot in the market, and maybe climb the hierarchy
(maybe).

On the other hand, I'm pushing 40.

That means events beyond my control are pushing me down the hierarchy, or at
the very least making the ladder rungs more slippery.

Would you take it all back and pick a different profession, if my assessment
is balanced?

------
jmpman
IBM recently forced remote workers to move back to specific offices. Those who
couldn’t or wouldn’t move were let go. I expect that policy adversely impacted
employees over 40 whose families were unable to relocate due to school,
spouses jobs or caring for aging parents. My cynical view is that IBM likely
knew that was the case and enacted the policy specifically to target those
over 40. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some emails from executives so
excited about their scheme that are still discoverable. Probably a good power
point deck on the benefits too.

Would that have been illegal?

~~~
notacoward
Yes, it would, and thank you for bringing that up. I'd forgotten that little
bit of news, but now I'm pretty sure it will figure into this case.

------
throwaway5250
I'm old (and indeed pale, male, and stale), but not sure whether I care about
age discrimination or not. If a company thinks they can make more money by not
hiring me, I don't really want to work there.

I _do_ wish there was some way to eliminate "dummy" interviews--interviewing
older people but with no intention to hire, just to make the numbers look
good. In my recent experience, this seems to be fairly common.

~~~
crazygringo
> _If a company thinks they can make more money by not hiring me, I don 't
> really want to work there._

What if that same sentence weren't about age, but were about gender or race or
sexual orientation? Genuinely curious... seems like it would be the same
argument, but then some people feel age shouldn't be a protected class like
the other ones are.

~~~
throwaway5250
Speaking only for myself (again, white/male/old/straight), I'm okay with that,
too. It does feel like there's a bias against my groups right now, but this
mostly annoys me due to the dummy interview problem I mentioned.

(If this seems paranoid, take a look at the detailed stats Google released
about their workforce and observe what's been happening to their tech white
male category.)

------
pigscantfly
My apologies that this is slightly off topic to the wider discussion about
IBM's layoffs, but if hiring people based off of their skills is unacceptable
as you say, how are people supposed to make hiring decisions?

EDIT: Somehow, the parent comment this was made as a reply to (notacoward's
above-thread) has moved, and this comment has become top-level (and a non-
sequitur). Is this a bug?

~~~
notacoward
> hiring people based off of their skills is unacceptable as you say, how are
> people supposed to make hiring decisions?

Hiring people based on skills is perfectly fine. Hiring people (or firing
them, which is what this is about) and just _saying_ it's about skills often
is not. That's why I put "skills" in scare quotes. It's like when companies
use "culture fit" to mean whichever races, genders, and fads the founders feel
comfortable with. It's not that culture fit isn't a real thing, but much more
often it's a shibboleth (or "dogwhistle" in current parlance). Similarly,
"skills" is clearly the messaging IBM has chosen. Now it's up to them to prove
that they were truly making efforts to optimize skills and not something else.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Now it's up to them to prove that they were truly making efforts to optimize
> skills and not something else.

Disparate impact analysis will require them to prove something closer to that
they actually we're optimizing skills, not just making efforts to, at least
presuming that the unequal impact prong is proven.

------
rb808
Does IBM have any good products that are worth paying for any more? It seems
like a dead company still walking somehow.

~~~
Someguywhatever
No, they don't. The only reason they make money is that they have connections
and in's at large organizations and access to lucrative government contracts.
Many governments only deal with IBM scale organizations because for some
reason they think that they can sue IBM if something goes wrong! (lololol)
That idea is so ridiculous, IBM has some of the best lawyers around (and a
literal army of them), there's NO WAY to sue IBM, it's not possible, and even
doing so would be so costly and time consuming it would be a Pyrrhic victory
at best.

~~~
mr_toad
It’s not just the ability to sue. It’s partly just the labyrinthine government
procurement process that favours larger suppliers who can deal with all the
red tape.

There is also an element of cargo-culting in government procurement, where
they think that if all the proper rituals are being observed they must lead to
the right result.

It probably works well when procuring janitorial services, but with IT it just
helps cement lock-in.

~~~
Someguywhatever
Yes this is very true, and most people procuring IT services in Gov't probably
don't understand what they're asking for. They think a static web page costs a
lot of money or is difficult to implement because they're technologically
illiterate. Meanwhile IBM implements that static web page for them for a
million taxpayer dollars.....

------
yashap
Would be interesting to see, for each of the layoff events, an age-histogram
of those laid off vs. the company overall.

~~~
outworlder
Maybe IBM Watson could help crunching that data?

~~~
mattigames
Watson was fired as well; and is now suing for fleshism

------
Crontab
IBM _should_ be sued. It is blatantly obvious what IBM did and I hope they
they get their asses handed to them.

------
mancerayder
It wouldn't be quite as bad for these folks if the _hiring_ side of things
also didn't discriminate on age.

There's a really good business profit-oriented reason to discriminate: older
workers ask for more money, defend their interests better, and generally are
less open to things like death marches, on-call and such.

I don't know what the solution is. I'm pumping my money into income-producing
real estate assets as a hedge, while I sell myself as a consultant. But I can
already smell the difficulties that lie ahead.

Some friends climbed the corporate ladder into senior management. That works,
too, but it's a slog and you better enjoy it.

------
pfdietz
Do tech employers tend to hire in places that, by their nature, reduce the
number of older workers? If it's too expensive to own a house or raise a
family somewhere, that will tend to filter out the older candidates.

------
throw2016
If seniority and experience do not add up for the majority then it makes
software engineering a very dicey proposition.

A civil engineer who has built 10 bridges or a doctor with hundreds of
operations behind them is much more valued than those entering the field.

Why would this not apply in software, surely someone who has built tons of
products has valuable experience or is there some other factor at work that is
devaluing experience?

This will also impact decisions to study more as that shortens potential
career time, if this is the case then for those choosing streams in
engineering maybe choosing another is a more rational decision.

~~~
henryfjordan
I think a lot of this stems from the way Software Development, as a practice,
is evolving almost as quickly as Computer Science is (or at least there is a
perception that it is evolving).

Bridges are built largely the same way as they were 100 years ago. Software
built today looks different from software built 10 years ago. So when a hiring
manager sees a software engineer with 25 years of experience, they can
basically ignore the first 10-15 years as irrelevant.

Imagine someone who has spent the last 25 years learning everything there is
to know about SQL Databases. They aren't going to do very well in a lot of
environments today with NoSQL all over that have only been around en masse for
~10 years.

Maybe that hiring manager is wrong. Maybe he's not. The engineers with 5 years
experience have the same keywords the hiring manager is looking for on their
resume as the engineer with 25 years experience. Maybe they aren't really as
adept, but since we seem to be unable to really get a good reliable measure on
skill, the difference between those engineers looks very small on paper. The
project is likely to turn out the same at the end of the day anyway.

So when you do the math at the end of the day, the more junior engineers look
like a better deal (and they really might be).

~~~
marshray
> Imagine someone who has spent the last 25 years learning everything there is
> to know about SQL Databases. They aren't going to do very well in a lot of
> environments today with NoSQL

Baloney.

------
TangoTrotFox
Calling ever more things discrimination or some form of _ism_ is really
starting to make the words lose and and all meaning. Does IBM like young
workers because they're young, or do they like young workers because they
disproportionately have traits, outside of youth, that IBM considers
desirable. I think few would argue that it's the former, yet that's precisely
what's necessary to suggest this action is the production of discrimination or
'ageism'.

Companies like young workers because not only is their real value
substantially lower than experienced employees, but because they also tend to
have a poor understanding of themselves even being worth that value. They also
tend to have few obligations outside of work and may be more anxious to try to
'prove' themselves. Older workers tend to not only demand more money but also
have a much better understanding of their worth, and their role. They're not
going to be trying to prove anything to anybody, and they are also going to
generally have obligations outside of work, such as family.

You can see this view and its effect play out very visible in other areas of
IBM. For instance as of last year IBM became primarily an Indian company, in
at least as much as they have more Indian engineers than American engineers.
And given they not that long ago had practically 0 Indian engineers and
nearing 100% American engineers, that means they were actively firing
Americans to hire Indians. Racism? Obviously not. It's the exact same thing in
play. This doesn't mean I in any way support what they're doing. But at the
same time I also don't support using emotionally charged buzzwords to try to
rally against it.

------
serg_chernata
I'd love to hear a first-hand perspective of a current or past IBM employee.

~~~
harvestsnaps
I’ve been with IBM for about 3 years now and I’ve found the talent pool to be
diluted. There’s talented engineers and not so talented engineers. I’ve met
some people where I get the impression that they’ve settled and are just
coasting to earn their paycheck. IBM isn’t doing a good job with keeping the
top talent in terms of compensation, so the good people leave.

I don’t know how they’re determining people to fire. My opinion is that
they’re pruning the moochers

~~~
blihp
Unfortunately that's what happens to a company that's been run the way IBM has
for the last ~25 years. The top talent with career aspirations bailed long
ago. That's not to say there aren't still competent and talented people there,
just that the most ambitious (whether for money, cool projects, promotion
track etc) are long gone. Unfortunately for IBM, those were the folks that
should have been helping management identify the dead wood which has been
piling up. The most talented people still around probably learned long ago to
keep their head down and mouth shut so they've de-prioritized 'the company'
and it's probably just put in their hours each week and forget about work when
they clock out.

------
nwmcsween
Do PR people even think of the context in what they are replying to? "Skills
change dramatically over time" OK somewhat crap reason to laid off a lot of
people, "we invest heavily in retraining workers" wtf are workers getting
retrained at? McDonalds? this is the exact opposite of what was just stated.

------
Shivetya
Interesting, with recent force reductions I have witnessed a document was
circulated that showed position and age. no other identifying information was
contained. Of course since the numbers were small it isn't hard to know who
was what age.

------
privateSFacct
As someone on the older side of things - I'd be curious. Given all the
terrible discrimination around age we hear about, why doesn't a company just
hire old 55+ year olds to do their coding.

This should be an undervalued labor pool given how discriminatory things
sound. It would seem like a business opportunity?

If you've got folks willing to work equal or longer hours more efficiently
with more experience and more current knowledge for equal pay as the 20 year
old out of college - that seems like a no brainer?

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Probably because for every fifty year old who boasts here about how they kept
their tools sharp there are another ninety nine who let their skills atrophy
and would struggle to code FizzBuzz in anything but Cobol.

------
dschuetz
I find it difficult to believe that IBM didn't see that one coming. I mean,
what were they thinking? "They won't notice the pattern anyway!" IBM HR,
probably. Were they really that careless? Or is it that somebody detected a
wee disproportionality in numbers and thought "let's sue them!" There are no
numbers nor details in that article beside 20,000 and "thousands" indicating
how bad the discrimination really is.

~~~
slivym
Or more simply "We're laying off 10,000 people, that's saving us >$500m USD
per annum so we can afford a law suit or two"

~~~
dschuetz
Plausible. But it also means bad publicity, and bad publicity is bad for
business.

------
danschumann
You can't fire for age, but what about # of working years left? If one person
will work for your company for another 20 years, and another will only for 5,
why can't you make the business decision to favor the one who will work for
you for longer?

~~~
pjc50
Because that's firing for age with a tiny figleaf.

Besides, you have no way of knowing how long people will work for you and
younger employees are more mobile.

------
jedberg
I half expected to see a story about how they were discriminating against
people _under_ 50.

~~~
ryandrake
Where on earth (in tech) are young people discriminated _against_? I don’t
think I’ve ever seen it. Taken advantage of? Oh yes. Discriminated against??

------
jiveturkey
thousands, yes but still clickbait. the class action is for 3 employees.

very very very much doubt this is going anywhere. my money is that this is a
publicity stunt for the lawyer, who’s done other similar high profile cases.

------
dgudkov
I wonder what's the threshold for a demographic ratio to be considered
discriminatory (age, gender, whatever)? Is 90/10 discriminatory? How about
70/30? 51/49?

~~~
tabtab
If you fire say 10% of those 20 to 45, and 20% of those 46 and up, you have
some explaining to do. Assuming you fire people only on merit, which should be
IBM's claim, then the percentage should be about the same.

I suppose IBM could make a case that older people are simply less productive,
which may not go over well with a jury. They could also claim HR
"inadvertently paid too much" for years spent at the company, and that they
are now correcting it. That's also a hard sell. Going to be an interesting
trial...

As an "older person" I find that experience has made me cynical such that I'm
less likely to be enthusiastic about bullsh&t fads, and managers don't like
people second-guessing their poor decisions (even if right). Ego often trumps
merit of a argument. Maybe we oldbies need to take Fake Smile classes.
"Distributed node.js microservice blockchains for a 7-user CRUD app? Oh
wonderful, I'm so happy, I can fart rainbows!" I wish my experience-induced
skills in spotting BS were more valued. (Yes, it's good to keep up on trends,
but there's so many that one has to pick with care.)

~~~
lacker
_Assuming you fire people only on merit, which should be IBM 's claim, then
the percentage should be about the same._

This is not accurate. Older people being more likely to be fired in a
particular layoff could be a correlation, not a causation. You can't
statistically prove discrimination in this way.

~~~
tabtab
Every "correlation" reason I've seen anyone come up with still looks pretty
much like discrimination done in a round-about way, or at least could be seen
as such in front of a jury. Still, I could be surprised.

~~~
lacker
The point of "correlation is not causation" is that doesn't _need_ to be a
reason for every correlation. Things can be correlated without there being a
clear reason. It's like how a reduction in piracy is correlated with global
warming.

see:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikaandersen/2012/03/23/true-f...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikaandersen/2012/03/23/true-
fact-the-lack-of-pirates-is-causing-global-warming/#2fc8b5943a67)

~~~
tabtab
An org doesn't have to "intend" to discriminate to actually discriminate.
Plus, the jury may not care about "causation" and instead focus on whether
some filter of some kind somewhere screened out older people. It depends on
the jury instructions and the personalities of the jurors.

------
erik_landerholm
I’m sure IBM modeled the risk and found it to be worth it.

------
fouc
A lot of people in this thread seem to be assuming that IBM was laying off
software developers mainly.

Could've just been managers and the like.

------
jayalpha
This happens in non-IT companies too. And companies have no idea about the
institutional knowledge that they throw out of the door.

------
toss1
>>“Changes in our workforce are about skills, not age,” Ed Barbini, a
spokesman for IBM said in an emailed statement.

If that were the case, they'd be investing in retraining, not repeated mass
layoffs that focus on older workers.

The concept that older workers can't learn is complete nonsense -- some may
not learn because of entitled attitude, that's across all ages (no I don't
have a study, but I do note the plethora of press commenting on entitled
millennials, etc.).

------
jordache
what about culture fit criteria? if a company wants to hire bros, then an old
dude would likely not qualify

------
known
Tax IBM Revenues, not Profits

------
trumped
older people tend to lack in the new ideas department (sorry if the truth
hurts) lol... I got downvoted in other comments because of this comment
(thanks /u/dang)

------
caymanjim
I'm already over the hill at 45. I don't know that I've ever lost any
opportunity due to age, nor do I expect it any time soon, but I see the fear
among peers even younger than me.

In every situation I've witnessed (both manifested and simply feared), it
wasn't age discrimination; it was simply that some older employees had stopped
learning long, long ago. They were never good to begin with, they got
complacent, and now they're milking dead-end careers until they fade away.

Ageism exists, to be sure, but tech is still largely a meritocracy. It may
appear to be a young persons' game, but get out of the Silicon Valley/startup
bubble, and the vast majority of employers value experience.

The key problem with most older workers is that they stop learning. I keep up
with technology, and my career options and salary continue to grow.

IBM isn't stupid enough to fire people just because they're old. They're
firing dead weight.

------
jonnnyquest
As a 59 yo who transitioned from development to tech support 20 years ago, I
saw the writing on the wall years ago that IT development/engineering is a
young man's game and if you don't want to transition into management, ala Bill
Lumbergh and TPS reports, which I didn't, you end up fading away. I didn't
have mad skills so I took the most hated job in IT, tech support at a college.

I can't say it's been a bed of roses, but I don't need a 6 figure salary and I
get to interact with a diverse user base. I also get to do practically nothing
when I feel like it and also walk around campus ogling 19yo coeds on a sunny
day as long as I do my job. Management in the public sector is notoriously
weak. I want to believe that the author of "The Peter Principle" worked in
academia or the public sector.

Anyway, regarding IBM, I've been reading about them culling the herd of the
elderly since the early '90's causing many suicides, heart attacks, and
substance abuse among their formally well paid and important (in their own
minds) denizens. I tried imparting this wisdom upon my favorite nephew to
become a doctor (back when it didn't cost an arm or a leg or a military
commission to become one, but he chose engineering. Didn't invent anything and
now is an over worked mid level manager with a large mortgage and 2 children 5
and 7 years from college subject to lay offs at upper management's whim - he's
been through two of them already and is only 42. Oh well.

~~~
seattle_spring
> I also get to do practically nothing when I feel like it and also walk
> around campus ogling 19yo coeds on a sunny day

It's funny that the people who cry "ageism!" the loudest also tend to make
comments like this.

