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Intel Faces Age Discrimination Allegations Following Layoffs (engadget.com)
Intel is under investigation for potential age discrimination in its approach to layoffs initiated in 2016, according to a report. Engadget: The Wall Street Journal has learned that the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is investigating claims that Intel's large-scale layoffs discriminated against older employees. In a May 2016 round that cut 2,300 workers, for instance, the median age of those let go was 49 -- seven years older than those who remained. The EEOC hasn't decided whether or not it will file a class-action lawsuit against Intel, but the affected people will be free to pursue civil lawsuits if the regulator doesn't find enough evidence to pursue its own case. The EEOC isn't allowed to confirm or deny investigations. However, an Intel spokesperson categorically denied that age played a role.
...they just weren't young and vibrant.
--
"Wish you were here" -- Pink Floyd
I've heard Intel tells their employees at hiring that the company likes young blood.
Captcha: unfair. Baw.
Sometimes keeping up with the latest tech is irrelevant. My dad worked with COBOL for 20+ years and lost his job in a round of layoffs where he had to train his replacement, a younger dude that knew nothing of COBOL.
Besides, asshat, this is Intel. Knowledge of the latest JS hotness probably isn't going to help anyone there.
I got my degree 20 years ago, I took classes in Java and Python, what's been new in the last 20 years?
They should have learned Electron. :^) Oh wait, this is a hardware company.
It is likely, old-time employees are paid better than the new ones, despite doing the same jobs. Intel may be able to explain the age disparity by that.
Of course, this Libertarian thinks, there should be no laws against discrimination — of any kind — at all...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I had heard they were closing down some factories in the past few years. Could it just be that they had a lot of older line workers?
How many young people fired does it take to prove this allegation wrong?
Older departments and projects got cut? Or older people across the board?
Either way, better to move to management or sales after 45 because agism is one more vibrant 'ism in Silicon Valley.
Were these 50 somethings dinosaurs who never kept up with the latest tech and still coded in Fortran?
Stay with the times or go extinct. I have a feeling this has nothing to do with age discrimination.
You're talking out of your ass. And it's the excuse that is used - along with "they don't have the skills" or "they don't fit in".
Total bullshit. 100% bullshit. And it's just an excuse to to get around the EEOC laws with impunity.
As my retired CIO supervisor at my volunteer IT job says, "It's not right, but when candidates of similar skills are presented, we will go with the younger one." (And this VOLUNTEER job means NOTHING to recruiters!!)
What's similar? Well those laundry list of skills are just a distraction.
So, Mr. Fellow AC, you keep telling yourself that those old losers are just inept and keep sleeping at night.
How do I know? I was once like you at IBM in the early 1990s when Gerstner was cleaning house.
We - young punks - laughed at all those mainframe losers from NY who were sent down to Boca to work on OS/2 Warp. Hummpf! Old timer losers!
They busted their ass. And they laughed at our memory problems saying, "Uh, we solved this in 360. Look at IBM's patents."
But no.....we (I) were cocking young assholes who thought WE were beyond such things. We had the SKILZ! and we'd ALWAYS keep up!
And we did! I spent quite a few thousand dollars a year on books, class, and courses to stay ahead.
It makes no difference. I even had one asshole say that, "If you didn't go to Stanford, then you are no good - old man."
So, punk - shove it! Your day is coming!
It all comes down to money. Why keep paying these guys high salaries when fresh college grads will do the work for a fraction?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
We can draw no conclusions merely from knowing the median age. The older employees probably probably made more money and received more benefits. Money is certainly part of the calculations for layoffs. There is also a greater chance that they were out-of-date making their cost/benefit ratio lower. Counterbalance that with the fact that companies often prefer to layoff younger workers to reward years of service. So the determination of who to layoff is quite complex, but it certainly involves many factors that are only 1 hamming distance away from age. So even if there is age discrimination going on, it will be really tough to isolate that from the other parameters.
Thankfully, it does all come back around to the firing/hiring managers when legacy systems start to fail for lack of maintenance and knowledge of those systems. Ultimately the stock holders end up taking it on the chin as IT costs go up and service goes down.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Here's an easy example that even you can accept. Say you were a web developer who never learned responsive design patterns. You would no longer have a job today, as everything requires a responsive mobile design now.
Sure you learned how to do web development 20 years ago. However your application of the techniques you learned are obsolete. Perhaps you even keep and force your old ways on newer more progressive types who know the tech that meets the job.
It's hard for you to accept this reality. You want to blame it on laws, patents, discrimination.
What if it's a lot easier? What if you haven't evolved your skill set enough compared to a younger person who is studying the latest technologies and applying them in a business setting better than you?
Why pay fresh college grads when you can get code monkeys in India and Singapore to crank out garbage for what is minimum wage here?
I don't know why you're being marked insightful.
If you came into our workplace not knowing a Java framework like Spring, not knowing Hibernate, and still using Java 1.2 practices, I'd have zero use for you.
This is probably why these people are being let go actually, they think that Java hasn't changed in 20 years.
MSMash will cheer-lead Intel for these layoffs and even attack Intel for not murdering them in their own cubicles if Intel can just come up with some accusations that these employees weren't woke.
After all, median age of 49? I'm willing to bet that a majority of them were WHITE* and MALE. Hell, I doubt that any of them were properly transgendered enough to count.
Not woke? Firing your ass is fine.
* And yes, Asian == white here.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
I got laid off last year by a very large and nameless company that had just bought us out.
One of the things in my packet was a list, by age, of the people laid off (titles but no names, of course) to show that they hadn't discriminated. I guess it did. This company is known (internally) for not promoting past a certain age, so they probably wanted to be proactive.
I was tired of the job and the terms were surprisingly good (an even more nameless member of management once commented that they are your standard soulless corporate bastards, but at least they're upfront about it), so no complaints.
At my advanced age, it took 6 months to find a new (and better) gig, a few weeks before UI ran out. Finding new jobs (except for short term contracts that charge thousands / month for insurance) are definitely harder the last ten years.
Maybe Intel is an evil company that likes to cast off older workers, just to make them suffer.
Or, maybe Intel was merely closing down some older and no-longer-profitable business units from the 1980s that happen to have been staffed with workers that hired on in the 80s.
Or, maybe Intel was merely flattening their management structure, laying off managers and keeping the engineers, thus disproportionally impacting manager who also happen to be older, on average.
Or, maybe there was some combination of the above.
The fact is, we don't have any information on the issue. That the EEOC does not like Intel tells us nothing, unfortunately. In a better world, the EEOC would be an unbiased and objective adjudicator of these matters and a source of reliable information, but any rational observer knows that it not the case, at least not lately.
Oh, man, you are going to get so much in the way of poetic justice. Unless you do not make it that far, that is.
Animated GIFs.
#DeleteFacebook
You're missing the point completely.
For example, my read of this statement:
They busted their ass. And they laughed at our memory problems saying, "Uh, we solved this in 360. Look at IBM's patents."
is that the old timers were saying, "We already solved this - go and look. Make it easy on yourself."
And as far as "studying the latest technologies" - who, exactly, do you think is building the new technologies that you cut your teeth on?
Check your premises.
Cue the app apper guy here...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
If you came into our workplace not knowing a Java framework like Spring, not knowing Hibernate, and still using Java 1.2 practices, I'd have zero use for you.
What's a Java?
Ezekiel 23:20
The entire tech industry is built on an endless supply of cheap, young fresh grads who are easily convinced that low salaries and grueling work weeks are the norm. As those grads gain experience, they demand more salary and a more flexible life and will reach a point where employers will find a way to get rid of them.
It's not fair to paint everyone over a certain age as a dinosaur. I've seen many freshly minted MBAs explicitly say they don't want resumes of anyone who "looks over 40." This is due to a widely held stereotype that the only people who understand technology subjects are in their 20s, and the 30s are the time to start planning retirements. Everyone in the first stages of their career deriding older workers should bear in mind that this problem will eventually claim them unless they're very lucky and stay on the cutting edge every day of their lives.
Losing a job in your 50s in tech usually means you won't be working in the field again, so I'm not surprised that these workers are trying to get an age discrimination settlement. Imagine you're 53 and can't access your retirement accounts until you're 59.5, and can't get Social Security until you're 62. If no one will hire you, you're dead. I've seen this happen to many people since our company tends to skew older.
Software is viewed as a disposable product with a limited lifespan. Therefore, building it poorly is OK, because it's gonna be replaced in a few years anyway. Therefore, hiring a young person for cheap to build it is fine; it just has to work well enough to ship.
Except, of course, the above premises are almost never true. That backfill script you wrote for the one-off run to add data? It will morph into a nightly task. That snippet of code where you hard coded a few strings? It will become the primary limiter to your entire pipeline architecture.
I'd have thought that after all the study and work done over the years that folks would have figured this out, at least to some extent.
But what baffles me the most is how the software discipline is the only one that truly reviles age and experience. In every other math, logic, and scientific discipline, it is a known that experience almost always means better results, and the ability to teach and mentor those who come after. In this discipline, it is not unusual to be considered over the hill at 30.
It boggles the mind.
Check your premises.
So, maybe it was discrimination, maybe not. However, just an average age doesn't tell you enough. What if they cut out a lot of management bloat, and those workers tended to be older?
Oh, Please.
You fucking morons think IT world revolves around Java and the web.
Sorry, but nothing and critical important in the IT world is done, "on the web". It's done with purpose built applications in old, but proven languages and very large and powerful computers.
Your pay check isn't the product of a .NET webapp and the IRS doesn't process tax forms with Java.
I don't think there really is any, "Latest Technologies".
There is the latest regurgitation of technologies, Rearranged, Renamed, and Refactored, but it's always the same stuff, just in different costumes.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Why keep paying these guys high salaries when fresh college grads will do the work for a fraction?
Because they have more experience.
Despite their many virtues, fresh college grads still need adult supervision and mentoring.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
For all but the most entry level and 'warm body' openings, I rarely see much interest in which technologies candidates know in the first place. Managers seem a lot more interested in what types of systems you have built and problems you have solved unless they are just trying to fill disposable seats.
Esp when the person doing the hiring is mostly thinking in terms of their next job in the next year or two, so if the college aged warm bodies do a crappy job it will be someone else's problem.
into paying for somebody else's healthcare? When you're young you don't need much. Maybe a little pre-natal care. It's not until you're in your 50s that most people really need the stuff. And those folks don't want to pay.
More importantly, while there are plenty of arguments to be made in favor of single payer healthcare any time it comes up the insurance companies spend half a billion dollars or more shooting it down. I still get people who tell me they don't want it because of "death panels". I ask them about "Wallet Biopsies" and that shuts them up, but I can't compete with the lobbying and advertising budgets of big phrama and big insurance.
I wish we could get a national referendum. Take out the deep south and the rural parts of Texas and Arizona and you've got over 60% in favor of medicare for all.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
All the big companies are doing this. All of them. Recall that any of these same tech companies were complicit it in not hiring away from each other, tanking salaries and affecting career progress. We suspected that was happening before that behavior was exposed. Trust your instincts. And yes, all you youngsters, this can and will happen to you. Unless Skynet takes over in the meantime, in which case we are all fcuked.
Remember, you're not let go because of your age. It's just your productivity dropped because of things related to your age. Shouldn't be a problem. If you worked at Intel you're probably extremely good at your job and will be able to find something else with a salary more in line with your current performance.
that's nice and all but it's not that big a deal when a stay at the hospital is $20k. You're probably thinking of tax credits, e.g. when the amount paid is given to you as cash. I've heard that suggested in the past and it's silly. It's basically a round about way to do single payer healthcare. We keep all the disadvantages of insurance companies: high cost and substandard care. The 'substandard care' comes from the inevitable caps on the credit.
The only real fix is a single insurer; e.g. a single payer. That's because health care isn't something that should be left to the free market. Neither is food, which is why we do the farm bill every year. Some things you don't leave up to the invisible hand.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
However, an Intel spokesperson categorically denied that age played a role.
"We didn't discriminate against older employees," said Cody McYoungling, 27.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The layoffs came with money. They money was a function of length of service. For older staff, the money was simply better than staying until retirement. A whole age group of employees within 2 years of retirements took the money and ran because it was worth more to them than staying and working. This was a problem for those who remained when the most senior brains walked out the door.
Younger people got the boot using the same criteria as older people, but there was optionality to volunteer and that is what biased the distribution.
Posting anon for obvious reasons.
Yes, these fossils don't realize that all software development nowadays requires the use of shitty frameworks such as Hibernate.
Were the olders given the opportunity to accept it?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I'm really surprised at the lack of floating point unit jokes when dealing with Intel math here.
Seriously, numbers tend not to lie. If the mean age of the fired workers is statistically significant over those retained then Intel has some 'splaining to do. Yes the jobs these people were in will show as a factor but overall the public view will be that they culled out their workforce to get rid of older, more expensive employees to bring in cheaper hires.
Intel exists to make money, not provide jobs.
False correlation. I'd bet dollars to donuts, those older folks were pulling down larger wages on average then the younger ones.
It really doesn't matter if you're right or wrong. If your boss wants you to do the latest shit, and you give some old person run-around speech of "we solved these problems decades ago" and "who do you think built this stuff", then you're going to get fired, especially when that kid coming out of college knows the new stuff and will work for half your current pay.
Stop being a fucking idiot and do what your boss says. Or strive to become the boss. Or retire with all the money you should have saved in the lucrative tech field. But talking back, that just gets you fired.
Salary tends to be higher as one ages, and they can pay younger hires much less.
Much
Much
Less.
Oh, wait, that's age discrimination on both sides.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Why keep paying these guys high salaries when fresh college grads will do the work for a fraction?
Because they have more experience.
Despite their many virtues, fresh college grads still need adult supervision and mentoring.
Real-life example. We had three software products to deliver to the Government every quarter - Solaris SPARC, X86 and Firmware patches. Each took a week to research, generate and package manually and was usually done by the newest, youngest, cheapest, and least experience team member. I worked with him one cycle (I was his mentor) and wrote a Perl script that automated almost the entire process enough to produce all three products in one afternoon.
Guess who they laid off?
Of course, they laid off their most experience Perl programmer, so I'm not sure who's maintaining my script, but it's not my problem anymore.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Seriously though, staying employed is real easy, you just have to play the game. Older people, for the most part, do not play the game.
The game, of course, being "we want you to work 60 - 80 hours per week but we're only gonna pay you as if you work 40, and by the way if you take any time off for things like family issues it's going to be reflected in your performance review, and any complaints will also go down on your record as a refusal to be a team player."
So true.
As a contract employee at age 45 - a number of years ago) for a major public utility, my supervisor commented after signing off on a monthly routine paper shuffle relating to agency contract employees, most working in situ for years, of the extremely high cost of my ever increasing insurancr premiums.
I did not inquire as to the specifics. I didn't care. If they wanted my services, they would adhere to their procedures. Otherwise, adios amigo.
Much of my time was spent training recent college grads with all of the proper credentials, but with attention spans of an ephemerom, many of whom exiting after wasting a few weeks of everyone's time.
I, however, without any degree, but buying my own equipment and other resources as a matter of routine to ride the wave of ongoing hatdware/software development, just kept plugging along because those to whom i reported had to have someone competent to keep their system functioning, and they appreciated my work in development and implementation while conforming to their corporate culture (without being married to them), while they themselves fought for their own positions in the never ending rat race of musical chairs (so called jobs).
My point: I had/have not ever been hospitalized, and had last seen a doctor decades earlier for antiobiotic treatment for tonsilitis (the doctor wanted to know how i knew i had tonsilitis. Ha!
But i wll not get started on that, as i believe that industry is largely a scam, and should be avoided as much as possible (speaking as one who worked for a few years as a medical claims inspector.
End of rant.
Fortran is pretty much alive and kicking.
Usually for things that take a few more braincells than putting some hipster js turd together.
Your ignorance of the value of experience is stunning.
I hope that you yourself are not a developer. Because if you aren't, then said ignorance is forgivable; if you are, however, then you are certainly a part of the problem.
Grow up. Learn to do the right thing. Teach others to do the same. It actually can lead to a rewarding, successful, and lucrative career.
Or not. In which case, you'll probably be replaced in the next few years by a younger version of yourself who is gung ho to generate copious amounts of garbage that will implode under the weight of its own inherent flaws, poor design, and bad implementation, leading to the continuation of replacement of one second rate, spineless developer with the next, and a lack of progress in the actual engineering component of software development.
Check your premises.
lol muffingtonboast.
"Responsive design"? Is that what they're calling these abominations they call interfaces now, with all the useless animations and wasted space? It sure makes me respond alright..
Perhaps you even keep and force your old ways on newer more progressive types who know the tech that meets the job.
oooh newer and more 'progressive'! I can't wait! It's sure progressive alright.. Progressively shittier for the user.
What if it's a lot easier? What if you haven't evolved your skill set enough compared to a younger person who is studying the latest technologies and applying them in a business setting better than you?
What if the older guy has experience that eliminates the need for all the costs and cycle wasting that modern software development imposes?
Most people who label discussion as 'backtalking' are usually the ones who are the most full of shit and know it. They aren't worth working for anyway.
I worked at Intel in 2016. I luckily walked away before the big layoff, but I know several people who remained. When they blanket offer everyone over a certain age a lump sum of money in order to "retire early" (the sum wasn't nearly enough to allow someone to retire early, unless they were already planning to retire in the coming months), you really can't claim that age was merely a circumstantial correlation. After the chips fell with who did/didn't accept the "retirement package", THEN they commenced laying off the rest of the workers. Not sure if the EEOC is considering those people to be part of the layoff, or if those numbers only represent the involuntary ones.
"Bob, we need you to rewrite the payroll system in the latest advancements in Java."
"You fucking morons don't realize that :
A. It will take 5 times longer to process.
B. It won't be compatible with our accounting software.
C. It probably won't comply with regulatory requirements.
Oh, and BTW, when 10,000 people get fucked up paychecks or no paychecks at all, I'll tell the board it was because you wanted to have the latest and greatest stuff."
"...Bob, umm...never mind."
Seriously, fucking with shit that works and replacing it with unproven stuff, is a waste of time and irresponsible. Shit like that can bring a company down.
Sure thing. I'll be down the street at one of the dozens of the other shops that has been trying to hire me away from your sorry ass.
Best of luck to ya!
Check your premises.
the h1b was willing to work 80+ hours for 70K!
he had to train his replacement
Moral of the story: never train your replacement.
I don't care about two weeks of extra pay or whatever else they're offering. Why help your boss fire you?
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
we don't have single payer health care so some where deemed to cost to much to keep on.
(Security comes and escorts forkfail out)
(pushes button on intercom)
"Jessica, could you go through the hundreds of resumes we've got and pick 10 or so that you deem most qualified? Have that ready by Thursday please, I'm taking the family out on the yacht tomorrow so I won't be in, thanks"
That is sad but true. Even in a good job market, thereâ(TM)s always a line of people ready to take your job. Burning bridges at your company like forkfail just did would be an extremely bad move. He got fired with cause and is now without pay for however long itâ(TM)ll take him to get rehired...and then theyâ(TM)ll ask him to do new stuff there eventually. Wonder if heâ(TM)ll snap again?
The millenials claim they can't get jobs while the companies are laying off only the older employees.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The big tech firms keep telling the federal government that there is a terrible, severe, industry-hampering shortage of tech workers that is so very bad that America must allow them to import an unlimited number of tech workers from abroad in order to prevent an economic meltdown. If the tech worker shortage is so severe, then SURELY the mast basic law of economics (Supply and Demand) would mean the value of tech workers would skyrocket and firms like Intel would do everything they possibly could (including raises, increased benefits, etc) to RETAIN every single tech worker.
There is simply NO WAY any of the silicon valley firms could possibly let og of a single tech worker with such a severe shortage.
Nope.
Story cannot possible be true.
[end sarc]
I was so happy that I was given the buy-out that I danced like a ballerina in the hallways of Intel's Jones Farm Campus as I left and started my retirement to Bellingham, Washington.
Here is the link to a video re-enactment of my behavior during my last days at Intel's Jones Farm Campus in Hillsboro, Oregon Mark Allyn as a Plastic Wrapped Ballerina Auditioning For The Nutcracker At Intel
So happy to dance and sing in front of Slashdot's community!
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
billing / codeing is a big mess in us healthcare!
Some dockets need to spend a lot of time on billing to just get paid.
well single payer stops balance billing and network BS.
Great! Too bad for them.
Of course, the words Perl and maintenance don't go together in the same sentence.
"f you came into our workplace not knowing a Java framework like Spring, not knowing Hibernate, and still using Java 1.2 practices, I'd have zero use for you."
If you came into my workplace not knowing how to write your own frameworks without using Java, we'd had absolutely no use for you. We need real coders, not puzzle-piecers.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
If you came into any workplace touting Hibernate, you'd have a much shorter shelf-life. You can fuck off right now.
Funny Hibernate story: I joined a project that was using Hibernate. Fairly smart devs, not DB savvy. They had a routine to clear a table in the database. Yep... they loaded up each row as an object, and deleted that object. Because heck, you had Hibernate, it was evil to directly access the database.
Duh.
BS. Utter BS. You really think that older devs can't or won't learn things? Heck, when someone starts talking about some exciting new development, it usually reminds me of something I was doing 20 years ago.
No. If your manager says "we need to do X" and it's something new, they want someone who can learn how to do X. Which you know, devs who have been around a while and seen a lot can do. Unlike some younger ones who think that a web app is the end all and be all of existence.
Depends on whether you want it done right or not.
I remember listening to a co-worker argue with the insurance company over the phone. She had been to the doctor for some sort of "well-baby" pregnancy checkup. The office had coded it wrong so insurance denied the claim, even though it was clearly a covered visit. She was asking the insurance person how it should be have been coded, and the insurance person was accusing her of trying to commit "fraud" by getting it coded right so it would be covered. It was absolutely insane... "guess the code to get paid... no, that's not it, try again..."
I guess that's true, these days knowing Java is irrelevant since no one actually programs in Java, instead they use frameworks to glue together other people's frameworks.
I never really learned Java, since every time I tried to pick it up again, the language style had changed so much it felt like I was learning from scratch.
I'm playing the game where no one under 40 understands how to actually program on bare metal anymore.
I have no idea what your motivation is for your post. I can tell you that you will wake up much sooner than you can imagine and you will be in that age group. You can spend time and money staying on the cutting edge in your field and you will still be laid off because you will be seen as dangerous because of experience and expensive because of seniority. You will have obligations because your children and grandchildren need help, but you will have no prospects because of your age. Remember your comment when it happens to you. None of us expected to wake up tomorrow and be seen as old and without value.
"Everything" requires a responsive design pattern or needs to be mobile? I've never done web or mobile development and I'm still working and get way too many emails and phone calls from recruiters.
No, they can't. Individual arbitration is almost certainly part of the Intel employment agreement, like at nearly every other modern country. So if the EEOC decides not to go ahead (which in the current Administration would be a good bet), the ones laid off are screwed. Plus, they would lose any severance benefits they might have gotten if they challenge anything.
Maybe they just concluded that they didn't specifically need their most experienced Perl programmer to maintain that script? Experience tends to lead to higher salaries and it's kind of expected that the higher your salary, the more likely you are to find yourself on the chopping block when management starts looking for how to reduce costs. Looking hardest at the most expensive things when you're trying to save money is just plain sense when it comes down to it. Having worked with plenty of people considerably older than myself it's become very clear to me that experience and effectiveness as a developer are nowhere near as well correlated as experience and salaries.
When you have a set savings goal or need to maximize your cost efficiency it's only natural for management to try to minimize the number of people actually laid off and that's obviously going to lead to the most expensive employees, who tend to be older, to be given the most attention. I have a hard time believing that as an employee the average gopher is actually worth the 2-3 recent college graduates their salary could be used to hire/retain.
It's not just the money aspect, I have a feeling a lot of managers do this just to minimize the number of people they actually have to lay off as there's both PR and human reasons to want to do that. Thus all in all, if you consider the actual goals of management and the related circumstances, getting rid of older workers first does kind of make a whole lot of sense.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
I think you'll find this is Wage not Age discrimination.
Typically in these huge companies, when they decide to make a round of layoffs there's no analysis done on who is meat and fat in the company (trimming only the fat). The process goes usually....
Big exec goes.... hmmm I need to cut half a billion from the payroll? Easy !
Ring ring...
Exec: hey DBguy (in the payroll office) can you do a quick query for me?
DBguy: Sure....
Exec: if you take the highest paying employee in every department excluding top execs and sum their wages what do you get?
Dbguy..ummm... ....... ... 100M....
Exec: ok how about the top 3....
DbGuy: 350M...
Exec: hmmm with the top 4....
DbGuy: 490M....
Exec: Bingo! Thanks DBguy! (hangs up)....
DBguy thinks: hmmmm... yikes... better give myself a paycut for a month or two.
You really are thick if thats what you took away from his post.
Your government already spends a Trillion then 'someone' has to pay even more, but your outcomes are worse than the countries that do it properly and pay less.
I assume an analysis would show that the workers kept also earn less than those laid off.
Age is probably less of a factor vs malleability and compensation.
Younger managers don't want older workers, and everyone responsible for a budget understands the desire to get more for less money.
Which would result in you being fired and reminded about large financial penalties for violating your NDA. Maybe the next guy won't say no. Besides they'll be able to make a career out of the constant fixes and performance improvements.
There's a lot of money to be made from implementing bad ideas from management. See also many SAP consultants...
Does this really happen? I've never worked anywhere that throws money at stuff that is working perfectly fine just because some new technology was released.
It's usually the exact opposite. Things could be made so much better, but because they just barely work there is no business case for spending the money to improve them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If an employee was not keeping up with the job requirements they could have been fired for cause at any point in time.
A defining characteristic of a lay-off is is that it is NOT a for-cause termination. It is an elimination of positions. If the demographics of those whose positions are terminated do not match the demographics of those who generally hold the position, that puts the lie to claim that it was the positions that were targeted.
so adjusting my gross doesn't really make that big a difference. It doesn't 'pay' for my healthcare. At best it's just a discount. One that even at my income level (above median) I already get to write off.
I'm sorry, but you are wrong. Increasing tax deductions for medical expenses isn't going to solve the health care crisis. It doesn't make healthcare affordable for the ever shrinking middle class, let alone the lower castes.
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Who in their right mind would lay off the people who have demonstrated the greatest sagacity and experience in a company? Especially for a bunch of kids who don't have sufficient character to be honest on the resumes?
Most of the stuff I see on Indeed is web stuff.
The world might not revolve around money, but I'd rather have a job than whatever the "important" stuff is.
Funny Hibernate story: I joined a project that was using Hibernate. Fairly smart devs, not DB savvy. They had a routine to clear a table in the database. Yep... they loaded up each row as an object, and deleted that object. Because heck, you had Hibernate, it was evil to directly access the database.
Duh.
No, they weren't fairly smart devs, they were fuck'n idiots.
Then again, based on what mallyn ( 136041 ) said, maybe not.
I used to work for another big Silicon Valley megacorp, and they had a big layoff. A few months before the layoff, they had a Very Generous "Early Retirement" offer, which I had been working there just two months short of being able to take advantage of. (That sounds kind of like what mallyn described.)
The layoff, for those of us of a certain age, came with about an inch-think document of statistics of the ages of those laid off, a pretty nice severance package considerably better than industry standard, with a Very Generous super-duper severance package if you signed the "I will not sue for age discrimination" agreement. The enclosed statistics making it clear that they were well prepared to defend themselves from any such suits.
Since I already had calls from one of the company's competitors looking to hire someone to do pretty much what I was already doing, I took the money and ran.
It certainly doesn't keep people healthy. https://science.slashdot.org/s... It just keeps them alive longer at the end so they can vote Republican and take everyone's money.
...and "web stuff" in no way requires Java.
Ezekiel 23:20