
Investigation Confirms IBM Layoffs Targeted Older Workers - sohkamyung
https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-careers/propublica-mother-jones-investigation-confirms-ibm-layoffs-targeted-older-workers
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buttcoinslol
Dupe of -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16648000](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16648000)
\- This article/discussion is still on the front page.

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theabacus
Different article and different source.

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bhouston
As much as people like to slam Cringely he covered this in two parts two years
ago:

[https://www.cringely.com/2016/03/28/is-ibm-guilty-of-age-
dis...](https://www.cringely.com/2016/03/28/is-ibm-guilty-of-age-
discrimination-part-one/)

[https://www.cringely.com/2016/04/06/is-ibm-guilty-of-age-
dis...](https://www.cringely.com/2016/04/06/is-ibm-guilty-of-age-
discrimination-part-2/)

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jforman
IBM appears to be in a world of pain.

First, while individual discrimination cases can be difficult to win, it's
much easier to win a case exactly like this because of the "disparate impact"
standard. Under this standard, an employment practice need only be shown to
negatively impact a protected class to be unlawful — it does not need to be
intentional, and it cannot be easily waved away by a claim of alternate intent
(rather, it puts the burden on the employer to prove business necessity).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact)

Second, an EEOC attorney stated in a case in 2012: ""We hope that all
employers and employees will now understand that even if employees sign
severance agreements with their employer, they are still entitled to file a
discrimination charge with the EEOC."
[https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/12-20-12.cfm](https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/12-20-12.cfm)

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zombieprocesses
The title is a tad bit misleading. The article itself states that there is no
smoking gun but a lot of anecdotal indicates that IBM is targeting older
workers. So nothing was confirmed.

But it is an industry-wide open secret that tech firms want to get rid of
their older workers and replace them with younger workers or possibly offshore
the position. Startup scene is outright hostile towards older tech workers
where the vast majority of the work force is in their 20s.

I don't see this getting any better. IBM is a special case because they have
been suffering during this tech/economic boom we are in right now. So they
have been laying off lots of people while most of the tech world has been
hiring. I think many corporations are waiting for a recession to provide them
an excuse to "trim" their tech workforce and I suspect most of that "trimming"
will be done at the older end.

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dpweb
I wouldn’t want to work for a place that targeted older workers. I need to
respect the company I work with.

That said, whoever hires or fires based on age, get good at hiding it, because
its illegal, and one should not be expected to just let that go.

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pishpash
There is no hiding it, if they go by statistical methods.

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ajeet_dhaliwal
Confirms seem like a strong word to use after reading the article. ‘Indicates’
or ‘appears to show’ is more fitting than ‘confirms’. In any case is this a
surprise to anyone? Companies do this all the time, unless you’re 21 years old
it’s hard to be surprised. By the time people are 30 they’re wise to the
perverse incentives and are doing their work slower or stretching things out
and the companies know this. Now in some cases the worker is still more
productive given their experience but it seems for whatever reason they’ve
calculated the experience isn’t valuable in this case.

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purplezooey
This is another lame behavior from big blue lately. The other one was the
dimwit CMO that ended work-from-home and sent the media into a tizzy about
remote work in general. They need to get some better executives that know how
the F to build a business long term.

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darawk
Isn't this just as easily explainable by older workers having been there
longer, and therefore having higher salaries, and therefore having the most to
save by firing them? The fact that they fired more older workers isn't, in and
of itself, proof that older workers were _targeted_.

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oldandtired
The opposite side of this is that the value of knowledge held by such workers
is enormous and getting rid of them because the bean-counters will see a
savings in wages and salaries is counter-productive to the long term health
and viability of the company.

However, one trend that has become apparent over the last couple of decades is
that there is a growing attitude that older workers are unable to keep up with
technology. The funny thing here is that, many time, this new technology is a
repeat of older technology in a new set of pyjamas.

The younger set, in not having a good grasp, of technological history, do not
see that what they have created is a repeat of past endeavours. In some cases,
the conclusions of the past was that the particular track was not followed for
specific valid reason which are still valid.

For many years, there is a portion of the older community that has used
specific tools and languages which have made us very productive yet date back
to the 60's, 70's and 80's. we have been looked on as not getting with the
future by many of the younger generation, while we are viewing it as we are
waiting for the current generation to get to the future (where we are).

It is actually quite funny. I am not saying that new technology is not worth
pursuing, I am however saying that many lessons of the past have been missed.

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exolymph
> The opposite side of this is that the value of knowledge held by such
> workers is enormous and getting rid of them because the bean-counters will
> see a savings in wages and salaries is counter-productive to the long term
> health and viability of the company.

Sure, but it's not illegal to be stupid.

