
Intel accused of age discrimination - rbanffy
https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/28/17401892/intel-age-discrimination-layoffs-investigation
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DeusExMachina
> older workers tend to be better paid

So, if the metric is "remove employees that cost the most but don't seem to
justify the cost," it's going to look like age discrimination, even if it
wasn't.

I don't know whether Intel did this or not, but the point is that you can't
assume the intent by the result alone.

~~~
danieltillett
Unless the bosses at Intel just hate older people (unlikely as they are almost
all older people) they are doing this for economic reasons alone.

I say this as someone already over-the-hill age wise that we really need to
find a way to allow people as they age to be able to accept a lower wage that
matches their productivity. Far fewer old people would be made redundant if
they got a wage cut every year instead of a raise.

~~~
humanrebar
First, productivity (as in widgets per hour) is a bad measure for knowledge
worker value. It's famously hard to measure the output of teams of engineers
over long periods of time, let alone the recent output of a single engineer.

Second, it is just taken as a given here that knowledge workers become less
productive over time. Why are engineers downhill starting in middle age but
not doctors, lawyers, professors, and professional coaches?

Third, it's also taken as a given that we can fairly cut the wages of
individuals based on... what? Again, we're bad at measuring performance. Are
we assuming they're less productive because they're older? How is that OK?
It's possible that a 50 year old has become better at relevant things in the
last year, surely.

~~~
roenxi
> Second, it is just taken as a given here that knowledge workers become less
> productive over time. Why are engineers downhill starting in middle age but
> not doctors, lawyers, professors, and professional coaches?

Software engineers in particular. Computers really started to stabilise in the
2003 when single core clock speeds hit a wall. 'Rapid' change since then looks
a bit glacial compared to what rapid meant in the 90s. I don't have anything
to back it up, but I'm pretty suspicious that a lot of specific techniques
that were important in the 90s are no longer important.

I know lawyers were in existence in ~500BC and the law famously changes
slowly. Doctors, coaches, etc are in a similar boat where the situation now is
basically the same as when they were 10 years old. No such similarities in
software, the languages, bottlenecks, opportunities and best-practice mindset
(in many areas) has changed. It makes sense why software engineers under the
age of 30 would have an edge. If hardware continues to plateau (moderate if,
given graphics cards) then the current generation will not have the same
problem when they are 50.

ASIDE: I always wonder if it is really a coincidence that Apple started making
inroads at the exact second that being able to quickly incorporate new parts
stopped being an exponential advantage.

~~~
oblio
A reasonably curious Computer Science graduate that stays up to date a bit
with current technologies will be as effective at 50 as your average 50 year
old lawyer.

You just need to check your underlying assumptions (aka axioms) once every 5
years or so. But core CS is as the name says, science. It doesn't change every
1-2 years. Knuth wrote about searching and sorting back in the 60s, neural
network (pardon me, machine learning) first appeared in the 80s :)

~~~
stagger87
NNs and ML go back a few decades earlier than the 80s :)

~~~
oblio
My bad, I couldn't remember how old they were and was too lazy to dig for the
exact year. They're pre-web technology, anyway :p

------
ghettoimp
Related, from earlier layoffs:
[http://chemjobber.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-clarifying-graph-
of...](http://chemjobber.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-clarifying-graph-of-ages-of-
laid-off.html)

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

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

(A) 22

(B) 26

(C) 31

~~~
xstartup
That might be the reason for most of the startup failing eh? Statistics can be
taken anywhere.

~~~
chrisbennet
I’m not sure I understand. 47 is the average age for founders with
_successful_ exits.

