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HP Hit With Age-Discrimination Suit Claiming Old Workers Purged (mercurynews.com)
Hewlett-Packard started laying off workers in 2012, before it separated into HP Inc. and HP Enterprise last year. The company has continued to cut thousands of jobs since. As a result of the "restructuring," an age discrimination lawsuit has been filed by four former employees of HP alleging they were ousted amid a purge of older workers. The Mercury News reports: "The goal 'was to make the company younger,' said the complain filed Aug. 18 in U.S. District Court in San Jose. 'In order to get younger, HP intentionally discriminated against its older employees by targeting them for termination [...] and then systematically replacing them with younger employees. HP has hired a disproportionately large number of new employees under the age of 40 to replace employees aged 40 and older who were terminated.' Arun Vatturi, a 15-year Palo Alto employee at HP who was a director in process improvement until he was laid off in January at age 52, and Sidney Staton, in sales at HP in Palo Alto for 16 months until his layoff in April 2015 at age 54, have joined in the lawsuit with a former employee from Washington, removed at age 62, and one from Texas, out at age 63. The group is seeking class-action status for the court action and claims HP broke state and federal laws against age discrimination." The lawsuit also alleges that written guidelines issued by HP's human resources department mandated that 75 percent of all hires outside of the company be fresh from school or "early career" applicants.
It's that they're expensive.
fresh from school or "early career" = h1b
Zuckerberg's comment about not wanting people under 30 is the default stance of the tech industry. There's a reason we never saw a lot of people older than us in the workplace. It wasn't because we were a new generation doing new cool things, it's because tech has always been like Logan's Run.
Seriously, Tech is bit too wild west to trust over the long term. Live frugal and save like mad. Once you have enough money stashed away to guarantee you won't starve, then work if you want to and it all becomes extra FU money. You can't trust tech as a career beyond 50, and maybe not even to 45 in certain specialties.
Wow!! Well if one guy can do it, they all can do it. Maybe you should tell them all this, I'm sure they'd listen to you.
But may be difficult to prove without a smoking gun, email etc. Otherwise company will claim they were purging more expensive employees for cheaper ones.
Typical corporate garbage, which is why no one in their right mind wants have a career now in Corporate America, b/c they know once they reach their 50's they become too expensive, outdated and replaceable in the eyes of Corporate America.
Older workers tend to get paid more and have higher health insurance costs. It's probably more about the wage than the age.
Yes, but older workers bring experience to the job that younger workers don't have...
I myself am willing to pay older employees more for that experience. A 50 year old developer who indicates that he/she is willing to continue to learn and improve themselves is a valuable thing to me.
I have hired 65 year olds who want to keep working part time and are bored with retirement...
Age is just a number...
And the decline of the USA continues. Experience shits all over youth. At 22 I couldn't code for shit. At 31 I can do 20x what I could at 22 and my skillsets make actual money instead of junk. US tech companies are vastly overrated. I'd bet that 200 seasoned 40-65 year olds could build a much better OS than Microsoft or Apple could. And they wouldn't fuck up the control panel design either.
then whine about not being able to find talent.....
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I am sure gov can help in putting people where they belong. I am sure you will belong to the ones that pour the gas into the showers not vice versa so it is all for good. At least from your perspective.
It's that CEO CFO COO and other top execs wanted to break the law and pad their bonus payments at the expense of older American citizen workers
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Now I'm sure that is curry I smell in the break room.
Put your money where you feel it's best-served... giving your money to companies that support (possibly) repressive and/or un-environmental policies need not be given more strength.
If you're an older person that feels companies routinely practice this policy, then don't buy their product.
There's more than one reason I don't shop at Wal-Mart... Whole Foods just made my shit-list.
The worst part is, and I understand this all-too-well, how does one get internet without supporting Comcast, AT&T, etc.?
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Maybe they should use 'The Purge' method. Lock em in the building and see who survives the night. That'll weed em out.
Executive compensation and excess is at an all time high, and yet they've convinced people to fight the elderly for the leftover scraps.
Trying to decide whether or not to name names, but in a sense it doesn't matter. As near as I can tell, ALL companies hate old employees. Various companies have various reasons, but I think high-tech companies (like HP and my former employer) might be the most hateful.
Experience is NOT an asset when no one has experience with the latest and greatest technology. Even if the old folks are willing to work as cheaply as fresh hires, and even if the old folks are fast learners, salary cuts are intrinsically demotivating. You can try disguises like "declining health", but they don't work well and job satisfaction tends to decline. Anyway, the bean counters at the top prefer fresh meat. Cheap.
In Japan the situation is especially critical because the demographic transition is resulting in lots of old people and very few young ones. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) has actually put out "guidelines" that strongly encourage companies to keep older employers who want to work until at least age 65, but the companies are just playing games with the rules.
Without naming names, I'm going to try to summarize "a friend's" experiences. For brevity, AF. The managers started pressuring AF to retire around 55, but AF declined. AF's job and working conditions were steadily made worse and then AF was shoved out the door ASAP, which was AF's 60th birthday. The MHLW had a response. Rough translation: "They aren't supposed to do that if AF wanted to keep working, but tough titties."
Anyway, I'm just an old philosopher, so I get to say "That's too bad" to AF. In philosophic terms, there are four quadrants to consider. Everyone wants to be in Q1 with good work and good compensation, and no one wants to be in Q4 with bad work and bad pay. The interesting cases are Q2, good work with bad pay, and Q3, bad work with good pay. AF wanted Q1 or Q2, but got shoved into Q3 and then Q4.
Me? I'm just an old bum who's outlived my usefulness. Insofar as most of my career was spent in Q1 and Q2, I can't complain too much. However, at this point it appears that my best outcome is to pass away before I exhaust my savings. I would contribute more to the economy if my new focus wasn't on minimizing my expenses, eh? You'd think the companies might be smart enough to worry about the loss of business from all of those penny-pinching retirees, but they obviously aren't that smart.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
A company is not just a day care center for adults. There are real products being built and services being sold. If you have cheap ass workers then you end up with a cheap ass company. The leaders of these companies probably don't even care that they have a lousy company and a lousy product, as they'll destroy company after company while collecting huge incomes along the way.
Step closer so that I can hit you with my cane.
true, but most 40+ would not sit quietly and work 80h/week on a poorly managed project. People with experience seen too much to stand by it. Some companies fix this problem by getting 22y/o and work 3 shifts for same pay. Some get better management.
Can a class of plaintiffs take action aginst a class of defendants? Dell needs to be included in this action too. Not like we're going to get any relief from the government.
fresh out of school:
+ willing to work some to much OT without extra pay
+ will settle for less pay and benefits
+ cheap to replace if necessary
+ unlikely to give a big fight if fired ("easy to fire")
+ little to no lost assets if fired or quits
+ more open to new ideas and changing tech
+ cheaper insurance costs
experienced / old-timers:
+ heavilty trained and experienced at their position. efficient. certified.
+ has learned "the big picture" in operations, understands subtle effects and can head off future problems
+ has valuable and possibly unique organizational knowledge (undocumented information and processes)
+ has formed working relationships with other employees, improved efficiency and communications
+ more reliable attendance
+ less likely to leave suddenly
But the big issue I have with this article is how they act so surprised that a company more frequently ends up replacing someone with another person that's younger. Um, people get old. If you keep replacing your workforce with people of the same or greater age, eventually you're going to be running on a staff of people all hanging around retirement age. You have to get new blood in continuously, it's required for a business to continue. I don't see validity in calling "age descrimination" on hiring. On selective firing, YES, definitely. But not on hiring. I don't agree with the "equal opportunity employer" thing, I believe that a company/owner should be able to decide who they hire. Once you've established the business relationship with them, then some rules need to kick in, to avoid "disposable/throwaway employee" resource issues.
A lot of companies seem to see their HR as a source of funding they can tap into when times get tough, "reducing staffing costs" by canning the seniors and hiring cheap replacements. This rarely works out well for them. They don't need government rules to bring the pain, they bring it to themselves. Radio Shack just got done committing "suicide by seniority-culling". They fired everyone that either was doing well or knew how to run the stores, and replaced them with cheap labor that was inexperienced, idiot, or both. (they did several other stupid things that are OT, but this was one of the "big three" that took them down) And down they went. It's a self-limiting problem. If HP wants to lobotomize their human resources, I say let them. We'll see them bought out under duress after they tank a few years from now by someplace like walmart.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Some people need to keep going because their SSI check won't cover their living expenses unless they put in that extra 3-10 years. Some people won't be able to retire even then, either due to having a divorce, or getting started late on their Social Security payments, or only getting paid minimum wage for most/all of their life, etc.
There are lots of reasons for people to keep working well into their 70s or 80s, maybe some of them have health reasons that they SHOULD retire for, but unless *YOU* are going to get off *YOUR* ass and support them in their 'no longer useful' years, you really have no right to tell them to GTFO at 60 because they had '40 years of taking up space, so let the youngins take over'. The world doesn't work like that, and that sort of attitude is what is making shit worse, both in the USA and abroad. While I disagree with blind 'respect your elders' especially in regards to taking their advice or judgement, that doesn't mean you should get to decide when they get out unless you're going to pay for them to do so.
No, EE. That was 5 years ago. He is out of ER now. It's a rat race.
We are ALL just one heartbeat away from death. What is your point??
Seriously? He probably knows 20-30 languages if he's been developing that long.
Even 60 year olds aren't about to keel over. Once of the best software engineers I ever met is in his 70s, he's runner, and he's damned fast. Young engineers busy chugging soft drinks and vending machine food are more likely to die.
That's a company issue, not an age of employee issue. I've worked with young guys who couldn't figure it out and old guys who kept up with tech. It's the person, not the age.
I'd argue that working until you're dead was the standard 50 years ago. Social security was originally set right around when people were expected to die. Some lucky few got a couple years. Others died before they received a single check even though they were paying for it. I think the real question is, "how can we keep senior citizens productive members of society?" Obviously they can't be working construction, but something to allow them income past their prime. I got into programming partially because I could keep doing what I love until the end. Now I'm worried my assumption was wrong.
Might as well be. Since they are almost pretty open about it. Instead, those seeking to reform Social Security are looking at raising the retirement age. Rather, they should lower it, and then bring in the various social security rescue programs, like partial privatization, to fix it. Those of us above 40 who are not wanted need not bellyache about being jobless: we'll be retired. And the whippersnappers out of school & college can get jobs, and be out of mom's basement
As the above summary stated, one of the guys who joined in the lawsuit - Arun Vatturi - is Indian. In fact, while age discrimination is just an open secret here in the US, in India, where there is no EEOC, HR departments are much more brazen about it! I know someone who was told over the phone, when applying for a job somewhere, when asked about his age & responded, that since he was over 40, they wouldn't hire him, since they were only looking for people under 40.
That's okay. We'll just keep raising your taxes to pay for us. Please keep working those 15 hour days!
HP intentionally discriminated against its older employees by targeting them for termination [...] and then systematically replacing them with machines
On August 24, 2016 Skynet became self aware and started terminating those who were old enough to be a threat, or at least look up from their cell phone occasionally. Fortunately for humanity, John Connor (in 2027) sent Kyle Reese back in time to save them...
Kyle Reese: You've been targeted for termination!
Arun Vatturi: What? You're going to have to speak up sonny.
Kyle Reese: Come with me if you want to live!
Arun Vatturi:Sorry young man, my hearing-aid...[falls to the floor after multiple gunshots]
Kyle Reese: You've been targeted for termination!
Sidney Staton: Slow down, this walker only has one speed [drops over from a heart attack]
Kyle Reese: Shit. Sara Conner was never this difficult. [suddenly is aware of approaching terminator].
Terminator: [Raises hand and stops] Don't leave me hanging.
Kyle Reese: Wait. What! Why do you want a hi-five?
Terminator: You saved me a couple of bullets, and blood on my new leather jacket. It's Prada
Terminator: I'm going hack the 401K of a guy in Texas and another in Washington.
Kyle Reese: Why would you do that? You don't need money.
Terminator: Half the time they drop over dead when they realize they lost their retirement.
Kyle Reese: You don't hunt them down?
Terminator: No. Telecommuting is more efficient. And the weight fees for the extra seat on flights is ridiculous.
Kyle Reese: Eff this, I'm going to go find Sara Connor. Don't you usually go after her?
Terminator: After five movies, a TV series, and a tepid reboot it's too expensive. IT workers are like fish in a barrel.
In Silicon Valley, employees feel the hot breath of age discrimination when they hit thirty.
The feeling was that young people had a better promotion path.
Old people might quit.
The reality was that young people repeatedly quit after 2 years so their resume would look like they were "go getters".
The old people kept the department going (including one in his 70s).
The young people turned over like crazy.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Seriously? He probably knows 20-30 languages if he's been developing that long.
You get rusty if you do them serially. I've forgotten more languages than I know.
Yet people still seem to like me doing what I do, even when I don't.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
"Director" jobs at HP are a joke. Mostly someone who knows someone or has something on someone. They get paid lots for doing not much anything.
Sort of like the old "Grand Poo Bah" positions (less the funny hats).
No it's not a point of one guy vs another guy.
It's a point of a country and a policy protecting and rewarding those who are vulnerable and who have shown the dedication.
This example isn't one guy being lucky, this example is one guy being old in a country where forced redundancies get really expensive for people with a lot of age and experience which incentivises them to be kept on.
That seems to be very much the core of the problem: No negative consequences for management that is bad for the company and for society as well, but huge financial benefits for the sociopaths doing it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Actually, it indicates your distance from birth. Maybe you should look up the definition sometime?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Very much so.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
WTF. That sounds like a guy who needs to man up.
Hey don't get me wrong, I am an old programmer... and I feel the fear. But rather than resort to a fetal position I am preparing for the inevitable.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I agree that it is BS on many levels, but it is what it is... an old story. This is the case for most older workers.
I personally am positioning myself for the inevitable. Learn and actually use some new skills, have a decent work portfolio, learn some soft skills like public speaking, and so on. Pay off all debts, and saving my ass off... basically making hay while the sun shines so when that axes comes it won't be a catastrophe, and be able make do with a lower paying job.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Why should they make room for the weak? They survived this long as various Darwinian forces weeded out their ranks. They are going to move over for a whining baby? I think not.
You're going to have to shove them out. If you can (which I doubt).
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You DID see they talked about people over 40, even. I'm 39. I have a mortgage and a two year old daughter. I'm not a freaking baby boomer - I'm from the end part of Gen X. I was born in 1976. My employer doesn't seem to have issues with older employees at this point, but if I get caught in a workforce reduction, I'm probably screwed. I certainly can't afford to retire twenty five years early. And you know what, my dad, who turned 71 years old this year, guess what, he can't afford to 100% retire either. He worked as a lineman for the phone company for almost 40 years, retired and then found out he was going to have to partially support my stupid stepbrother and his two daughters that moved in with him. So, he's still out there, doing computer repair work and troubleshooting network problems freelance, because his other choice is to starve, I suppose. Go find your own career, don't worry about taking it away from someone who still NEEDS it.
Get as much juice as you can from an orange....once the juice starts to fade, trash it and get a new one.
Usually when I look back at my code from a few years back, I have a "WTF did I do it that way" moment or two. This is because I'm constantly finding better ways of doing things. IT in this way is comparable to being a mechanic. Yes, the new just-of-of-school mechanic may have been taught a few tricks about new automotive technology that the old guys don't know, but the older guys have *years* of experience in the little intricacies or gotchas of the vehicles they service, the tools they use, and the industry in general.
They know that a certain pattern of wear tends to indicate a part failing in a particular way. They have a process down where the job can be done faster. They know that supplier A is cheaper but supplier B is better or faster to provide parts, or to which one is more likely to screw up an order.
All that type of knowledge also applies to IT, particular veterans of a particular company. They know your other staff, your suppliers, their habits and best practices. They know which meetings are important, and which they may wish to skip in order to get work done. They know the best time to work on gear to incur minimal downtime. They know that machine in the back rack has a weird issue the vendor hasn't been able to pin down, or hasn't documented, but how to fix it when it occurs (yes, it's in a doc somewhere but they don't need to spend 1-2h searching for the *right* doc). They know John in accounting always takes Fridays off so that's a good time to service his workstation but a bad time to schedule a meeting with him, and that you really want to use the *official* GBIC's for Company A because even though company B's work they're knockoffs and don't have unique MAC addresses. They know how to diffuse a conflict even with somebody who they really *really* don't like, or to smile and answer the big boss's questions about his home router.
All that shit is important, and it's all stuff that you learn from experience that makes you a better worker. Not all of it is portable between companies, but a surprising amount of it can be. It's that 5-minute conversation or trick that saves days of hassle, and possibly a whole lot of money. That's not to say all older IT people are equal, but there's a value to experience that can never quite be captured.
You can certainly keep doing it. You may not be able to get paid for it.
Not every position requires "experience". Do you think McDonald's would hire MBAs as cashiers at quadruple the price of their other cashiers because they would value the "experience"? The MBA's real talents would be completely squandered in that role. This is an extreme example, of course, but it works for other positions as well. You wouldn't hire someone with a PhD in Computer Science, specializing in artificial intelligence, so that they could do odd jobs like write a tool for IT to help manage their inventory. You wouldn't take someone who is qualified as a principal software lead and make them do grunt work like a junior engineer.
Lower positions pay less and older people, who are accustomed to being paid more, are more likely to have a high churn rate in such positions. If a person is used to making $130,000, you might be able to hire them on at $80,000-90,000, but how long do you think they'll stick around? It would be a safe bet to say they turned right around and started applying to other places to try to get back to $130,000, and as soon as that kind of opportunity comes around they'll be gone. Poof.
Meanwhile, someone who is early in their career will negotiate their way up to $72,000 and be proud of themselves for getting so much. You save $10-20k, get someone who is qualified for the work, and they'll probably stick around longer and try to work their way up (or not - some people aren't very ambitious).
In software, you can't have 100% of your engineers being software leads or being paid as software leads. But over time, especially for a large company like HP, the higher tiers can start filling up. Managers don't want to fire their employees if they're doing good work, and employees continually want more money. So as their salaries go up, no one is really saying "We can't pay you that much, so you're fired", so that employee ends up getting a minimal raise and kept around a little while longer. But if the amount of work isn't growing, then the top tier that's filling up will eventually get too full. And when your company is looking at restructuring/reorganizing/layoffs, it's natural to then look at every layer and see if it's appropriately staffed. If you've held on to a bunch of people for far too long, then the odds are better than good that the lower tiers are understaffed while the higher tiers are overstaffed. Which will naturally lead to laying off old people and hiring younger people.
It's just a harsh reality that a business doesn't have infinite money to pass around. They can't afford to give $140,000 to someone working a position that's worth $80,000, even if the person really is worth $140,000. That would be wasteful to both the individual(who isn't using all their talents) and company(which is overpaying for a role).
People are trying to ascribe some sort of intense cruelty or malice to this when that isn't necessarily the case. Some business people are ruthless...but do we know that's the case in this situation? I don't think so.
Along with the $18k Obamacare bronze lab + $8k OOP maximum.
Move, lots of places you can. Especially if you head up North.
..don't panic
Aren't prunes used to purge old workers?
love is just extroverted narcissism
The ones at the C level, anyway, and that is: an employment contract. Too bad we don't have something like that for workers, who would bargain for their collective good with the employer. Oh, wait . . . . . .
That is what people seem to miss about the kids coming out of college. They have learned, what, 5 languages? An old timer has learned at least 10 over the years due to the new hotness changing over the years.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
HP denied me employment, funny enough, for being too young. I never filed charges - Who cares if a kid didn't get a job? No court case there. Older people LOSING their job because of age? Now that's something a lawyer dreams for all night.
Nor could you file charges. You haven't proved yourself. You're just a kid. Being over 50, I have a long resume and accomplishments. These guys have a long record at HP. They were let go simply because they were over 50. Might as well had been because they were black, or a woman, etc. Discrimination sucks. I've had to deal with it all my life. Not that I complained about it. However I know it has happened to me.
Happened to my father-in-law. He hit 52, that was it. Nobody would hire him after that.
I think an interesting thought experiment will be what it's going to look like as real treatments for aging damage start coming online, and people's useful productivity suddenly skyrockets. Real treatment, the first of which is likely to be senolytic therapy, are likely only 5 - 7 years away. Organizations like the SENS foundation are laboring away bit by bit at this process, and WILL be producing real therapies. It's just a matter of time. When a 60 year old with all their experience gets the youth of a 20 year old, how will that affect the workplace?
The company I do paid work for has an average age of over 60; about 60% folk at or over 55, maximum about 78 ~79 years (experience tells when you are in engineering contracting business!); about 40% in new graduates. Mostly young folk of 30+ learning experience while doing the base intense calculation jobs (big math input) but judgement on calls by experienced folk. It saves them making mistakes. Disclaimer I am 76, one of the younger old folk.
Regards Eion MacDonald
Maybe distance from birth and proximity to death are strongly correlated for humans above age 20?
Not that much. And you also failed statistics 101, because that is _not_ what this graph says.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The insurance company doesn't charge more money for older workers.
That's why small companies have to pay more because the insurance companies assume smaller companies have older people.
As the companies get larger the insurance companies charge them a lower rate under the assumption the company isn't bilking them on the age thing.
And everyone at the larger company gets cheaper health insurance.
A large swath of males (like 60%) die between 60 and 70. The outliers skew the expectancy.
Nope. Not even close. Look at https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS.... Out of 100,000 men, about 10% will die in the 60s. Not remotely close to 60%.
Hmm ... interesting. I wonder how that reconciles with the thing I saw. Didn't bother to find a reference.