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Intel Faces Age Discrimination Allegations Following Layoffs (engadget.com)

Posted by msmash on from the facing-the-music dept.

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.

35 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. They weren't old.. by Arzaboa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...they just weren't young and vibrant.

    --
    "Wish you were here" -- Pink Floyd

    1. Re:They weren't old.. by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 5, Interesting

      And they had higher health care costs.

      We really need to remove health care as an incentive to lay off older people and an anchor on business profits that prevent them from competing with companies in countries where business doesn't pay for health care.

      It's so funny because *everyone* gets old. It's in *everyone's* interest to prevent age discrimination.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    2. Re:They weren't old.. by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 4, Insightful

      All it takes is allowing people to fully deduct the cost of their own healthcare. As it is now, it's a tax benefit for consumers to have healthcare paid for by their employers. Change it so consumers can deduct the cost of health insurance/healthcare and there will be zero reason to stay with the existing approach. And a side benefit is they employee will now be in direct control of the expenditure on their own healthcare, most likely resulting in reduced expenditures on healthcare.

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    3. Re:They weren't old.. by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2

      You know... for the bottom 60% that's almost useless to completely useless, right? With a low income that's already maxed the limit on deductions, a deduction is worthless. And even with a deduction, that only lowers the cost of health care by about 15% or less for everyone making $120,000 and less. This leaves a family facing a $12,000 insurance bill and getting a $2000ish deduction.

      Over 20 other countries use single player government health care and their health care costs are half to a third of our costs. And the cost is paid by the citizens who are well off. Not taken out of food and shelter money for the poor.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    4. Re:They weren't old.. by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2

      Until you get in an $89,000 car accident like my young 30's friends.

      Or you have a stroke like my 45 year old bud.

      Or your house burns down and you are hospitalized with $45,000 in ICU bills.

      And the point isn't that *you* personally benefit anyway. If *everyone* needed $6,000 in health care each year, then the cost of providing it would be over $6,000.

      The point is that 3 people out of a hundred need $60,000 in health care. The other 97 are fine. Everyone pays $600 and shares the risk.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    5. Re:They weren't old.. by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actual hard data shows other countries pay 50% to 33% of our cost and have better adult and infant mortality ratings.

      Our insurance is *great* if you are one of the "winners". It's bad for the other 80%. Insurance companies delayed coverage for a friend of mine until it was too late and she died of a curable form of cancer. They do this. All the time. That's why the ACA was passed in the first place. Insurance companies were literally canceling coverage after people had paid premiums for years as soon as they got sick. People who lost their jobs couldn't get coverage and died.

      We need something that's fair to everyone. You never know when you may not be in the "Winners" group any more. It happens all the time. Chronic illness being a leading reason.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    6. Re:They weren't old.. by mrops · · Score: 2

      How about federal health care. Pay it from taxes, win win. Don't pay for a military, pay for health care.

      Balance in favor of health care a bit.

    7. Re:They weren't old.. by jeff4747 · · Score: 2

      And a side benefit is they employee will now be in direct control of the expenditure on their own healthcare, most likely resulting in reduced expenditures on healthcare

      Unless you are a doctor, you are not sufficiently knowledgeable about what health care you actually need in order to make good decisions that reduce expenses. And this has been demonstrated in study after study.

      A functional "free market" requires an efficient market, and the asymmetry of knowledge guarantees the health care market can not be efficient.

    8. Re:They weren't old.. by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2

      Then you develop a chronic condition that the insurance company assures you is definitely not catastrophic but you find the bills certainly are.

      What we need is to quit messing around with individual insurance and just socialize the whole damned thing.

      Yup.. and just a couple months ago some 25 year old died because he wasn't covered and couldn't get diabetes medicine. Totally avoidable. Happened in america.

      ---

      That said- we have to be rational. We can't spend a billion dollars a year to keep someone alive. As a society, we decide where the line is and then we have to make those hard choices. For example, we can't cover medical expenses greater than per capita GDP. In reality we probably can't cover medical expenses greater than 10% of per capita GDP.

      And that means some really cute young kids will die because they would run tens of millions of dollars in medical bills each and every year to keep alive.

      It really sucks. But reality is harsh.

      But we can have reasonable coverage, especially basic stuff, for everyone without bankrupting them when they have a car accident with an uncovered driver, when they need $40 a month blood pressure pills, etc.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    9. Re:They weren't old.. by ChatHuant · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How is removing insurance companies and inserting Government going to be cheaper or more efficient?

      Because insurance companies have exactly the opposite motivation that we want in a health provider. What we want is to maximize health. What they want is to maximize profit. For insurance companies, actually treating people is a *cost*, which they will try to avoid. On the contrary, extracting more money in any kinds of ways is a benefit, and they'll try to maximize it. They have no motivation to reduce the customer's cost - on the contrary, the worse they treat the insured, and the more they bill them, the better.

      The government has no such perverse incentives; moreover, a large single payer system, such as Medicare, could use it's bulk purchasing power to negotiate great reductions in prices (as any reasonable business does). In the USA there are however LAWS forbidding Medicare to negotiate, which is just crazy.

      This is not just idle banter - look at this study, provided by the NIH. Private insurers have an average overhead of 18%, while public insurers (Medicare and Medicaid) have an average overhead of 3.1% (table 1 in the study). As another point of interest, the overhead of the Canadian single payer system is 1.8%. The study concludes that removing the insurance companies overhead would save a staggering 350 billion dollars a year - which would be enough to cover the cost of treating all uninsured people in the USA, and leave enough over to improve everybody's current health care.

       

    10. Re:They weren't old.. by Whibla · · Score: 2

      Just to expand and emphasize on this:

      Our Federal Government spends about $1.2 trillion a year on healthcare already - they already spend as much as other nations spend, per capita.

      Population of USA: 325 million. US Fed Spending on health: $1.2 trillion. Spend / Capita = $3392
      Population of England: 53 million. UK Gov Spending on health (in England): £124 billion* ($165 billion). Spend / Capita = $3113

      So, to within a few percent, our governments spend similar amounts on healthcare.

      Yet how many actually get by with just the Federal Government spending? Vanishingly few. We end up buying private insurance (or extended insurance) because that already provided is basically worthless.

      And yet, other than prescriptions for certain medications, I need pay nothing for medical care. I need no additional insurance to cover injury or illness, I have no overages, nor any 'realistic' maximum to the services I can receive if I have a condition that requires them. Of course I can take out things such as insurance to cover loss of earnings if an illness requires me to be off work or renders me unable to work, and can pay for private treatment should I desire, but these are not essential in keeping me alive.

      So, it does make one wonder: What the hell does the money spent in the US get spent on? Why is there so little value for money within the US health service?

      *In fairness the NHS is becoming increasingly cash strapped and, rather tragically, is being incrementally privatised, so it's not all roses in the 'Garden of England'. Free markets have their place, as does consumer choice, but, in my opinion, provision of basic health care is not one of those places!

    11. Re:They weren't old.. by sjames · · Score: 2

      Everything in the US costs several times more than it does in other countries. Military expenses, education, healthcare, take your pick.

      Note that like healthcare, education is much more socialized in Europe, so you're arguing my point there. As for military, that's because we keep starting wars all over the place. We should stop doing that.

      As for being healthier, have you seen the per-capita beer consumption in the U.K.? Have you ever heard of poutine? Time to stop making lame excuses. Europeans are healthier because they can afford to go to the doctor and take their prescribed meds.

      And the procedures, rules and quirks have nothing to do with government regs. They are all about maximizing the chances to deny a claim and making sure other company's plans cost more. Also about confusing the patient and maximizing co-pays. Much of it is the clash between people at the insurance company with no medical training but a lot of incentive to find nearly everything unnecessary and people at hospitals (also with no medical training) with a lot of incentive to find nearly everything absolutely necessary. The stereotypical fast talking used car salesman looks honest by comparison. Put the cool-aid down.

      Given that the U.S. is the outlier by far, it is your claim that is extraordinary, bu instead of matching extraordinary proof,t you offer only handwaving.

  2. Re:Or did they not keep up with technology? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:Or did they not keep up with technology? by halofan_sd · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I got my degree 20 years ago, I took classes in Java and Python, what's been new in the last 20 years?

  4. Re:Or did they not keep up with technology? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

  5. Re:Or did they not keep up with technology? by ArchieBunker · · Score: 2

    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
  6. Re:Sounds liek an investigation, no evidence yet by sinij · · Score: 2

    For us, it was hours worked. We let nearly every dev go that was working less than 60 hours a week.

    You are stealing from your employees.

  7. Re:Or did they not keep up with technology? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

    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
  8. It will happen to every techie someday by ErichTheRed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  9. No Country For Graybeards by forkfail · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  10. Re:Or did they not keep up with technology? by sycodon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  11. Re:Not enough data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Being one of those affected by this action, I have a little insight to this topic. Sure, I also have a little bit of a bias.

    This was not a case of closing a factory, nor of flattening management structures. Intel has gone through those multiple times, and as painful as they were, they were not like what happened in 2015 and 2016. In the recent disputed cases, managers were told from upper management to fire that one and that one and that one, with no choice or input from the direct or 2nd or even 3rd line of management. In my experience, these targeted folks came from many different divisions, and the prevailing similarities were that we were all older white males. Our managers were extremely unhappy that they had to let us go, and if it were merely a cost issue, would love to have traded out for other employees.

    To respond to one of the earlier comments above: most of these positions had absolutely nothing to do with Java or Python, thank you very much.

  12. How do you talk people by rsilvergun · · Score: 2

    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/
    1. Re:How do you talk people by lgw · · Score: 2

      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.

      Take out the people who disagree with me and everyone agrees with me!

      As far as "medicare for all", Medicare is underfunded by $27.9 trillion (by GAAP), or about $230k per taxpayer. We can't afford it now - how's it supposed to work financially if we pile more people into it? And remember, you still need (supplemental) health insurance if you have Medicare, as there's a lot it doesn't pay for, and Medicare itself isn't free, so it's not like all the money that currently goes as health insurance premiums could go as taxes.

      People will argue that there's less paperwork cost with Medicare, and that's true, but the increased fraud cost eats up a lot of that, and then you have the paperwork cost for the supplemental insurance.

      The one sure win here is for the government to standardize claims forms. That would be a massive reduction in paperwork costs with no downside in care provided.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    2. Re:How do you talk people by sjames · · Score: 2

      Bending over backwards to not step on the toes of insurance companys' toes (as well as pharmaceutical companys' toes) is why medicare's funding isn't adequate. Tell them and other for-profit healthcare companys to sod off if they don't like it would make medicare's funding adequate.

  13. Re:Sounds liek an investigation, no evidence yet by swb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Experienced workers are more likely to be resistant to "culture and process change" because they've been down that road before and seldom seen it actually result in meaningful changes. At best its a workable rearrangement of existing process, at worst its a distortion of the process that makes it worse.

    Younger and less experienced workers are more likely to fall for a charismatic sales pitch, not knowing that the changes will probably be a net zero change at best, or believe they have something to gain by attaching themselves to a "change agent" and their agenda.

    These days these process changes seem even worse than in the past because they so often seem to be tied to just generating more data for managers vs. any actual improvement in work product or work process.

  14. Fully deduct just means a 20-30% discount by rsilvergun · · Score: 2

    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/
  15. Re: Or did they not keep up with technology? by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 2

    Were the olders given the opportunity to accept it?

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  16. Re:Or did they not keep up with technology? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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. . . .
  17. Re:Or did they not keep up with technology? by forkfail · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.
  18. From an Intel Employee by chubs · · Score: 2

    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.

  19. Re:Or did they not keep up with technology? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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.

  20. Re:Or did they not keep up with technology? by sabri · · Score: 2

    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.
  21. So Happy That I Danced Out The Door of Intel by mallyn · · Score: 2
    Folks:

    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
  22. Re:Or did they not keep up with technology? by Darinbob · · Score: 2

    I'm playing the game where no one under 40 understands how to actually program on bare metal anymore.