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IBM Fired Me Because I'm Not a Millennial, Alleges Axed Cloud Sales Star in Age Discrim Court Row (theregister.co.uk)
A laid-off IBM cloud sales ace is suing the IT giant for age discrimination, alleging he was forced out for being too old. From a report: Jonathan Langley joined Big Blue in 1993, and worked his way up the ranks over the next 24 years. Then, in 2017, as worldwide program director and sales lead of the Bluemix software-as-a-service, he was let go. According to his lawsuit paperwork, Langley, 60, "was a successful employee and his performance met or exceeded IBM's expectations." Had he "been younger, and especially if he had been a millennial, IBM would not have fired him," his filing claimed.
Langley, of Texas, USA, was seemingly doing very well for himself within Big Blue. For instance, he netted a $20,000 performance bonus in January 2017, the largest such windfall within his team in Austin, we're told. His annual performance scores put him at the top or near the top of his group. Curiously, the month before, though, he was warned privately by his boss's boss -- Andrew Brown, veep of worldwide sales of IBM's hybrid cloud software -- that he needed to look for a new job, it is claimed. At the end of March 2017, Langley was formally told he would be laid off at the end of June. Langley was unable to get a role elsewhere within IBM, and its HR system marked him as having "resigned," it is claimed. In early July, days after he left the business, Langley got a letter congratulating him on his "retirement." IBM management told the US government's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that Langley was laid off after his supervisor Kim Overbay ranked him, in January 2017, as the worst performing person on his team, despite him bagging the biggest bonus that quarter, and earlier meeting or exceeding performance expectations, according to the lawsuit.
Langley, of Texas, USA, was seemingly doing very well for himself within Big Blue. For instance, he netted a $20,000 performance bonus in January 2017, the largest such windfall within his team in Austin, we're told. His annual performance scores put him at the top or near the top of his group. Curiously, the month before, though, he was warned privately by his boss's boss -- Andrew Brown, veep of worldwide sales of IBM's hybrid cloud software -- that he needed to look for a new job, it is claimed. At the end of March 2017, Langley was formally told he would be laid off at the end of June. Langley was unable to get a role elsewhere within IBM, and its HR system marked him as having "resigned," it is claimed. In early July, days after he left the business, Langley got a letter congratulating him on his "retirement." IBM management told the US government's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that Langley was laid off after his supervisor Kim Overbay ranked him, in January 2017, as the worst performing person on his team, despite him bagging the biggest bonus that quarter, and earlier meeting or exceeding performance expectations, according to the lawsuit.
IBM hires outside advertising and marketing agencies to handle both their internal and external sales and marketing materials, including some of the research and the entirety of their branding. Their leading agency partner since the mid-1960's has been Ogilvy & Mather. This means that IBM's "outside counsel" is gravely complicit with enabling IBM to push forward these violations. (For more chronology, see http://adage.com/article/adage...)
P.S. Ogilvy & Mather personnel have previously been held responsible/guilty for things like embezzlement, misappropriation of funds from federal contracts, and various grey legal area misdeeds.
This. If you've got to slash costs, easy way to do it is kill off the older guy$ and gal$ who are making more buck$ then the younger folks. Better yet, ease them into retirement or buy them off so they don't raise a fuss like this guy. Govt has done this quite a bit. Bonuses for getting out/early retirement. The military even had "selective early retirement" boards. You can even get rid of some useless folks (ever try to fire someone from the Gov?). The problem is you lose a lot of expertise, too.
You do not want to work at a place where your performance matters, or they WILL take advantage of you.
Posting as AC for obvious reasons. I joined IBM in 1993, my first job. I dedicated my life for the company, so much that I didn't even see it coming. I was an exceptional employee. Couple of weeks before my boss gave me a hint that I was being fired. If you are +40 be advised, we are too expensive, we will be let go. I hope the best for the company, but everyone with experience is being fired. It used to be that our culture made the company great, and the culture is dying. I don't know, it really makes me sad... I was loyal and commited, just as I learned from the guy who hired me and later retired. "We changed the world twice already" he used to say.
That's because the bean counters don't understand the industry, they think they can just get a cheaper and younger workforce and things will continue as they were. If they can replace a bean counter with any other bean counter, why can't they do that with everyone? Idiots, the lot of them, and it's going to end badly for IBM. Can't say I am too sad about it, since they charge and arm and a leg for EVERYTHING! I was writing front end screens to interact with COBOL on our mainframe, to increase capacity when we needed it for testing some tech would come out, flip a dipswitch (or something) on the mainframe and magically we got double the performance out of the thing. But we paid for every second the switch was flipped. When we were done with parallel production testing he would flip the switch again. AFAIK there was no other changes made, so half the mainframe was idling the entire time. You don't want to know what the cost was - something to the tune of half a million a week, I forget exactly now, I just remember being outraged by the whole thing. Oh, and don't get me started on their mess of a website, it's faster and easier to use google to search their site than it is to actually use their built in search engine.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
and I'm one myself. I'm not as good as I was 10/20 years ago. My experience might compensate but I also don't work 60 hours a week for 40 hours pay like a kid fresh out of college.
Here's the thing, if older folks are so valuable why do we need laws against age discrimination? Wouldn't the free market shake things out when a company that hires these more experienced laborers out competes the one that fired them?
Reality is that if I'm running a business I need 1 experienced old guy to manage 10-20 young engineers. The reason we ban age discrimination is the same reason we have (had?) a 40 hour work week, unemployment insurance and minimum wage. They're regulations used to artificially raise wages because in their absence wages collapse. We've been pulling back on those regulations for 40 years now and wages have been steadily declining while productivity goes up every year.
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Just invite one of your helicopter parents to join you on your next employee performance review.
Trust me, your manager will consider you to be a defacto millennial.
The guy is 60. His parents likely aren't alive anymore, or if they are, suffering dementia.
Beyond that, keeping current with technology, including fads, also helps.
The guy was in cloud sales. A "technology" so current, the hipsters haven't moved on yet. A "technology" so hypey and buzzwordy you could win a game of Bullshit Bingo by listening to this guy for 10 minutes. Being current was not the problem.
In this particular case, it was just the world coming full circle, to IBM. They've been selling people on other people's servers (theirs) since their inception. Cloud is tailor made for IBM. And this guy knew it, exploited it, and made the company millions in sales. They fired him because IBM has a policy of not rewarding successful employees. Nobody is ever supposed to hit that bonus level and make the company actually pay out. It's supposed to be aspirational, like winning the lottery, to make the proles slave away just a little bit harder. It's supposed to be the carrot dangling in front of the donkey. The donkey is not ever supposed to get the carrot. He might stop moving forward if he does.
IBM could actually weasel out of the age discrimination suit, if they were wiling to admit in writing their real company policy, which is to fire all high achievers regardless of age, because they don't want to pay those bonuses. IBM is just stupid enough to do it, but their lawyers will prevent it.
In a rational world, you don't fire your fucking star sales guy!
I have an example of that happening, and it isn't even age related. Years ago a young friend of mine was hired to do telemarketing. The first months he sold within the average. The second month he beat expectations, received a bonus, and was named employee of the month. The third month he was fired.
The reason he was fired? He noticed the script telemarketers were provided and had to read aloud was BS and could in no way convince anyone to purchase the company's products. So he threw it away and began doing it his way. That caused his sales to skyrocket. But it was company policy that entry level telemarketing drones must follow the script. And so he was fired for not following that rule.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Dude, you're old enough to remember Bob Cringely writing about this crap at IBM incessantly for a decade. But you weren't so old then, were you?
Go work for an American company who will value your skills and pay you more.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Do you know anyone who owns a store, restaurant, deli, or the like?
Yes. I do. And have for over 35 years.
Ask them who are their most troublesome, high-maintainence, rudest, and most difficult to satisfy customers. You'll find it's the old people every time.
No. You won't. Old people are more particular, but if you accept that they know what they like to eat, and don't want whatever "new thing" you're trying to push on them, it's easy: Give them what they ask for, and they're happy. The worst customers are 18-25 with rich parents. Second are 25-35 with fat bank accounts and no life experience.
Yes, confirming this means doing a little legwork of your own.
I've been doing that legwork for over 35 years.
IBM found that Boomers were the least likely...to understand IBM’s brand.
I suspect that boomers were the least likely to admit that they have any idea what that means.
As people get older, they are less likely to put up with stupid marketing nonsense. At least in my experience.