How IBM quietly pushed out 20,000 older workers
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- Опубликовано: 19 апр 2018
- Age discrimination can be very hard to prove.
Read ProPublica's full feature story here:
features.propublica.org/ibm/i...
In a ProPublica feature that collected the stories of over 1,400 former IBM employees, it was estimated that a staggering 20,000 American employees ages 40 and over have been eliminated by the company. How does one of the country’s largest tech giants quietly push out this many older workers? Don’t we have laws to protect people at the end of their careers?
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Never be loyal to any company.
company section directors who are in their dream jobs always think they are golden and that their bosses back them up 100% on practically all situations, until very suddenly, they are not.
Age old saying "If you want loyalty, get a dog. I work for money" is still true to this day :)
Everyone should have learned that in the 2008 recession.
@matt thomas Then you're being loyal to yourself.
Smart
The fact that in the US you can sign deals that waive your legal rights is something that I've never quite understood. How is this legal? You're setting up a system that will always be used to ensure that powerful stakeholders will never be held accountable.
If you don't agree with that, you don't get the job. Thats why.
You being an employee of a corporation isn’t a right... if a company wants to lay you off, they can. If a corp can’t maintain its workforce, they can decrease it.
Jon G there is an inherent inequality of bargaining power to the freedom to contract in employment relationships. In the UK such employment contract clauses that waive your legal rights are illegal.
Mavrokattou h Prwti Same in India
To waive your legal rights is illegal in every reasonable modern country... except for the USA. Similar things with paid maternity leaves and other stuff
Kind of weird that they would do that considering they're name is basically synonymous with old.
Munashiimaru well that’s obviously what they’re attempting to correct
It's worth 160.2 billion dollars so I don't think it's fussed.
And their logo still looks like it's from 80s' :D
Rafal Meckovski And Vox's Harriet serif typeface is really modern is it?
Their servers are still used everywhere.
An IT worker in their 40s is hardly obsolete or over-the-hill. People of that generation are the ones who built the Internet and created most of the IT infrastructure the world uses. The reason tech companies, and companies in general, try to shadily get rid of older workers is because people in their 40s are not as easy to exploit as new graduates who know nothing about the working world. That being said, a company that does this kind of thing usually ends up shooting itself in the foot. When was the last time something truly innovative came out of IBM anyways? Companies are only as good as they treat their staff.
Did you know that IBM Research is the Largest Research Org in the world ? and the largest patent holder consecutively for many years ? The reason you dont hear about IBM inventions are coz 1) its in the cycle of re-inventing itself 2) Everything IBM does is B2B now not B2C. 3) Technology is one thing where you will see changes happen and implemented super rapidly.----IBM'er #weAreGettingThere
IBM has a bit of a reputation in the world of business IT. All I can say is, I haven't heard many good things about the company. I'm sure the machines themselves are OK, but...
Hyperledger and, Quantum Computing to name two
I agree that people who are older are not obsolete, but people in their 40s are not the generation who built the internet. People in their 40s were graduating university around the 90s , when internet was quickly becoming a mass market thing. Though you could argue they are the ones who made the internet what it is today.
There are plenty of older programmers who just learned a framework and know nothing beyond how to use a long obsolete framework. Young programmers are like that too but at least their frameworks are still in use.
Oof, this hits close to home, as my father was one of those thousands when I was still in high school.
Thomas Nimmo my grandmother too
The workforce has dramatically changed over this generation. High tech jobs are set up so that employees work on short term projects and need to apply for a new job every few years. Good luck to an older employee who hasn't stayed on the cutting edge of his field. In America where health care is linked to an employer, people would be wise to cache earnings in anticipation of needing that cushion much sooner than they may like.
The video stated the firings had nothing to do with performance. Older workers with high performance ratings, older workers considered by their peers as subject matter experts are getting whacked.
They just dump old workers. And they dump US workers in favor of H-1Bs. Their performance has paralleled their use of H-1bs - they suck more as they get more H-1Bs.
Yep it is comparing an era where you spent all your life making your career in one company to today where most people have changed jobs several time before even reaching their thirties.
spelunkerd i see u commenting on every video i watch. DIY car stuff, foxbody videos, now this? Wtf..
KrimsonKyriarch when their performance is independent from their activeness, yes. Which is likely to be the case for non-research positions.
So 40+ are "older" workers. This statement just brings me to reality!
Mohit Garg in the tech world, yeah. It's been that way for decades sadly. Unless you plan your career path well, and have a bit of luck, you can end up pretty screwed. I see tons of folks in their 40s, 50s, even 60s trying to attain a masters so they can have a shot of re-entering the tech field in a real way.
More importantly, and I just learned this by looking it up, 40+ is when you begin to get protected from age discrimination under US law
I don't know wtf is wrong with tech companies, but they are notoriously ageist. It doesn't even make sense because those employees should be the most valuable in terms of knowledge and skills. I think it's groupthink that a younger company means more innovation and that mentality is adopted by the leadership and possibly investors if they somehow request and know the median age of the company. It's also pretty easy for young people just out of college or still in their 20s to start tech companies and I imagine many prefer their employees be younger than them so there's less chance they will seem more qualified and on a personal level, make them feel younger and less old school corporate by being around a bunch of young people.
metaleggman18 I think that is a case for more "volatile" fields like Computer Science which are relatively easier to gain expertise in and which experience a steeper technology change in a very short amount of time. "Core" engineering fields like electrical, mechanical etc dwell more on the experience of their older workers since the fundamental technology doesn't change much.
Welcome to tech mate. The minute you cross 35 you might as well be a dino.
My Dad and like 90% of his colleagues were fired from IBM few years ago
I really think the mindset has changed. Millennials and beyond don’t expect to work for the same company for 30 years. Both my parents started at their jobs right out of college and have worked for the same places since. (Albeit internal promotions. I don’t expect the same outcome
I'm surprised that this a surprise. This is happening across all industries and has since the 80s. The ball was all in business court and the vast majority of people have no effective redress regarding employment.
Levi Washburn makes sense when you need strength, not so much when the job is skill based. Experience trumps enthusiasm.
Levi, but in the case of IBM, the older folks were doing a good job. There was no reason to "put them out to pasture" as you've repeatedly said throughout the comments to this video.
Why would IBM do it then? Do you think they are totally irrational, or do they know something you don't? What was the average compensation of the older workers they let go?
The reason seems two-fold (at least). Younger workers usually have a more up-to-date knowledge of new systems (e.g. take ML algorithms and Tensorflow/KERAS) due to their study of these in things in college/uni and secondly, they are just starting out so can be paid far less and work longer hours.
For IBM, younger workers = newer tech + higher throughput/dollar.
I guess experience and loyalty can only take you so far in this cut-throat capitalistic model.
Zhu Bajie do people not realize that every generation after them is already destined to be better with technology than they are?
Cut off age is only 40. We're getting older, yet we get rid of workers earlier and earlier. What could go wrong.
The answer is money. Corporations don't care about values they care about value.
Adam Patterson they get angry and vote against their best interests. Rather than fighting the system. #Year3018
Woah it's not like the only purpose of any company is to make money?
Never do your employer even a small favour. They only care about their margins. Never work anywhere for more than 5 years no matter what
The problem Khizar with changing employers so often is that you start at the bottom of the seniority pecking order every five years and before you can qualify for company benefits - such as they are - you first have to pass through a six-month probation period. As you get older, that is not easy to do.
@@georgfriedrichhandel4390 weeeeeeeeeeelll, really depends on your level of occupation. For "higher" levels, there are actually studies suggesting that changing employer gives you more salary increases than staying in one company. Not representative of all occupations though...
@@wolfgangbr1576 When you say "higher levels", are you talking about executives? I have read other reports that rank-and-file employees usually had to start at the bottom when they changed companies.
Sadly, changing job is not easy when you are more than 35 years-old.
At that start of your career, never stay at a company more than 2-3 years before taking the experience you gained and move on. It is the only way to get the raises you deserve. As you age, you want to lock into a company in your 40's and ride it out to retirement if you can.
My fear is that my company thinks they can get someone else to do my job for much less money, as I have been with them 18 years. I am not scared because of my age, but it could appear that they are firing the old to replace with the young... But I see it as firing the loyal and well paid with cheaper labor.
Going to a small / medium sized company is usually best for longevity. You end up doing more, but much hard to replace since jobs don't overlap.
Amy Sloane Start your own company using your savings/experience/contacts!
Héctor Aguilera yeah thats so easy
Kris B that because most business follows the John Welch school of business. Layoff employees and hope to make profit in the small run.
If they *can* get someone to do your job for less money then you are currently overpaid. (I am currently overpaid but at least I admit this and please don't tell my employer!)
My father has worked for IBM for 30+ years and, somehow, still works there. My private music teacher however was affected by these layoffs a few years ago, but as severance, was given the choice to attend classes to get knowledge in a different technical field
Getting rid of older staff makes them ironically, even more of a dinosour of a company than they already are...
Which is probably why they had to let go of the older staff
My Dad took early retirement at 53 back in 1999.. he was happy about it. He just started farming full time instead of part time. After 34 years there, he said he enjoyed it while he was there, but didn't miss it at all once he was gone. He's still raising cattle and cutting and baling hay today.
That amount of time is enough, I think.
IBM is not even close to being the only company that does this. For a business writing class, I’m doing a report on unfair tech workplace practices that includes a section on ageism. In some places it’s just the way people think and act, and others it’s blatantly intentional. Regardless, most of the people getting fired are 40-50, meaning they’re within their peak performance age and can’t prove that they’re competent workers when they got fired for something that’s often assumed to be poor performance. It’s hard to get rehired then, even when you had a really good recommendation from your old job.
19% still seems high for arbitration. That's one of the most predatory things businesses regularly submit their users and employees to just by sliding it in there and making you unable to sue, which would be a long shot anyway.
they've been doing this for years, fire people and hire them back as contractors
My grandfather was laid off after 28.5 years, 6 months away from retirement.... WTF he did get employed again (at the Pentagon) but other than that he was super pissed. This video has seriously intrigued him.
Aging-It happens to everyone
Nailed it👏
Roshan Koshy 👍🏾 Someone liked your reply!
Doing the same Stuff in Germany
sgm1036 they don't give you any work until you get bored and leave
Not quite the same thing.
Oh yeah, on paper we do have those, but there are a lot of loopholes.
They did the opposite to me: Work until you don't even know what day it is.
That is pretty hard to do here. once you are in the company, you are in. any experiences anyone?
If you want to get rid of older people from a sector, the political one is where it should be happening. Make anyone whose age is more than 50% of average life expectancy ineligible to run for office. Encourage a bit of long-term planning as anyone young enough to run for office will also be young enough to have to live with the consequences of their decisions made in office. No more of this "Why should I care? I'll be dead by then." mentality.
"IBM’s goal, it seems, is to flush out its older workforce and fill the void with fresher faces to reflect its younger “fiercest competitors.” According to the findings, IBM supposedly laid off older workers due to “out of date” skillsets, only to re-hire them as contractors to perform the same duties at a lower pay and no benefits."
Cutting hours and job titles to lower pay and benefits. The Wallmartification going beyond retail here.
EdwardERS pretty much proves that age discrimination in a company such as IBM is all about money.
Those practices aren't new in the IT industry. My aunt's employer did the exact same thing to her about 15 years ago.
auxetoiles they may not be new but they're not actually good for a company.
Tbh if they hired them back as contractors it was for higher pay. Read a book
When it comes to business, all empires will fall, those who fought for these empires, will always pay the highest price. Think of that when you work for one of them.
Older workers have pensions and benefits, and actual experience in the field they work in.... Can't have that.
@New Message
It's way easier finding another job once you have experience, compared to not having any. Try getting a factory job straight out of High School, and you will see what I mean.
James Crews only way to get is like i did was through recommendation, thats how i scored my first factory job.
Thank you for all those workers who lost their jobs, so that your children and other upcoming young man learned a valuable lesson.
I worked for IBM as a contractor from 2007 through 2014. During that period there were at least five layoffs that I was aware of. Nearly all of the non-contract employees affected were long-term employees with 20 or more years at IBM. To be fair, they were given fairly generous severance packages and most were pension eligible. However, most were not ready to retire and were essentially forced into it. Bottom line is IBM management was eliminating older pension-eligible workers in favor of younger workers with limited benefits and no pension. It's age discrimination for profit, plain and simple.
I actually felt lucky that I was contract, I survived those layoffs mainly because I was a fixed, hourly-rate employee with no benefits. By all rights I should have been let go in favor of a direct employee, but it was all about the $$, employees be damned. When they talk about how their employees are their most valued resource, etc., they are flat-out lying.
Towards the end was forced to accept a rate cut, then management decided they would arbitrarily furlough the contractors for weeks at a time (gotta make those year-end numbers look good). I left in the summer of 2014 and haven't looked back, better job now, more money and full benefits. IBM is not a company I would ever work for again. If you're just graduating with a STEM degree and thinking about applying there, don't walk but RUN elsewhere.
I was one of those older workers laid off from IBM in 2011. Yes, I did have to sign an agreement stating that I would not sue in order to get the severance package. I am glad that IBM is taking it on the chin nowadays.
My mom is 60 yrs old and she’s approaching her 30 year mark of working with them and she constantly has anxiety because of the constant layoffs that they are pushing out.
I think 30 years of working is still enough.
"here's the thing about aging... it happens to everyone" *claps* bravo, great way to close this off.
The nick name when I worked there "I've Been Moved"
IBM normally overwork the newer younger employees, and hate the older ones they can't exploit and take advantage of.
Another part of this story is their contracting they do for 10+ years for many employees.
It was crazy seeing this article title, brings back nightmarish memories from working at IBM
I feel like if you work at IBM after 2010, you should certainly expect to be layed off. They're likely less than 10 years from complete bankruptcy.
I worked at IBM as a developer on an internship from 2014-2015. If you look at October of 2014, you'll see a sharp spike downward in their stocks, that they've yet to recover from. I remember being there when that happened. Things changed dramatically after that. Much like the story and video say, a lot of very experienced developers never came back after Christmas vacation. Sweeping organizational changes were attempted to be put in place, trying to change to an "agile and fast approach," all of which felt incredibly rushed, desperate, and really didn't scale to the size of the organization they were trying to apply it to. They made a short attempt at trying to adopt a more startup-like young culture with office parties, lunches between upper management and us university interns, and event outings but it just resulted in more alienation of the older demographics.
At the end of my internship, our team that had some ~80 student interns was replaced with 15. It felt like they had just given up. A few interns I worked with went back to IBM afterwards, but not many.
It was bad. I've never seen a company so desperate to find it's place in a world that had seemingly left it behind, and then just give up.
My father just found out that he's being forced to retire after working at IBM for nearly 40 years, after years of having to do the work of three people as they keep laying off experienced employees. And you can't blame technological advancement in his case, because he works in an administrative role that has nothing to do with research or design. They don't see a person when they look at him; they see dollar signs. He had become too valuable. Ironically.
Same for IBM in the UK, my dad was amongst those told either retire now or stay literally one more day and he'd need to work another 8 years to get back to his *current* pension package, let alone expand it any further.
What happened?
@@videosandrehome He left 🤷♀
Employee liquidation: the (unfortunately) quintessential American🇺🇸 business practice.
Should companies keep unprofitable employees around?
mkirklions You mean overpaid execs who do little-to-no actual work but still get massive bonuses whilst the actual hard-working employees get laid off from this one of their three jobs?
Yes, the useless execs should be dropped.
BuddyL the business executives own the most stock in the company so it’s a no brainer they would get paid more if they own more of the company . Liquidation is good for the business if it needs it to minimize costs. At the end of the day it’s all for the customer.
New rounds are coming soon!
GE does this too. They did this to my mother, said she missed to many days but hadn't used anymore than what they said she was allowed. Too many doctors appointments and they let her go. Turns out she had cancer, we learned this after she was let go. After some talks, GE settled, and paid my mother a monthly retirement.
50 years old in 3 weeks after 32 years at my Job. Since the age of 18 and now I'm too old? It happens everywhere. Now I just completed my CDL License so now I'm ready too do something else. 🤷♂️🤯🤬
damn you Vox, how dare you keep my attention with interesting topics !
Wow, I had no idea about this. I hope IBM gets trashed in the court of public opinion and loses a lot more money than if they never discriminated in the first place.
2 years in IBM. This perfectly matches my experience.
I lived in Atlanta in the 80's and remember well how in 1989 IBM began the times of "White Collar" layoffs. It was rare to see his happening and it became a real wound to many loyal employees. IBM actually had some (to be laid off) ppl train their replacement. Or else! Really sad they continue to treat their employees like this.
Well, America. That is your problem when you don't even protect your own people.
巨人の肩 it’s happening all over the world so I would not be talking
The disregard the tech industry has for technical experience is alarmingly scary. Yes, technology moves on and progress happens, but throwing away valuable tribal knowledge and senior developers provides exactly *what* benefit, now? Or is it just about throwing away anyone who might think stupid, risky, and low-benefit technical decisions like "let's migrate everything to MongoDB" is a good idea?
A profession that throws away older members ceases to be a profession and becomes a job.
"Neuroplasticity" starts declining far younger than the average tech developer's age, though. The rest of the argument is literally "we don't want to pay for experience". Which strikes me as critically dangerous. We're basically an industry that rewrites the world every 20 years for the sake of being able to get a bargain on labor. Which, by the way, *will* cost you on the back end when your fancy new shiny tech breaks, and you have shittons of security vulnerabilities, or your database loses critical info.
I figured this out at the age of 28 and resigned from a management position with a major oil company. I saw the handwriting on the wall when older, more experienced and long-term employees were riffed (reduction in force). That was in 1986. Of all my former office mates (about 20), I know of only one who retired with full company benefits (the controller). The rest were riffed, left on their own accord, or died prior to retirement.
The purpose of a point system is to hide bias behind the illusion of objectivity.
Anyone in the tech industry with contacts at IBM would know this is true... it's been happening since the late 90s.
Or sign 'this is void' as your name with an impossible date. Promise no one checks it and it will not hold up in court at all. I've done this for over 20years, countless times. I've used it to save my ass a few times too.
Erick Mascari Actually??
Read More yes. I've done it for most every job from my first one. Used it to not have to cut my hair without repercussions. As well as in several other situations I wanted to control for my favor. Most people are stupid. The obligation of the intelligent is to take advantage of it. If you manipulate every situation you'll see through most anyone who tries to manipulate you before they can and how to counter it in your favor without the weak minded ever even noticing.
But wouldn't that also void you being hired by them / anything else on that paper?
This is not only a thing for IBM. It is done in every large corporation at some point. It is not necessarily targeting older people but more expensive to be replaced with cheaper (there is of course a correlation because of seniority). The jobs are very often moved to India or Eastern Europe or Brazil, as most of them can be done from anywhere. Even the picture that shows the IBM office at the end from a drone, is the office in Budapest :)
I know a company who did a "reorganization" to cut costs, which meant they re-defined the organization to eliminate thousands of positions globally. In some new job descriptions, they made an MBA a requirement, which effectively prevented older workers from being interviewed because, at the time those folks had joined the company, that wasn't a common thing. For many others, they parsed the roles into smaller tasks and then outsourced those tasks to twenty-year-olds in a foreign country who regularly made mistakes because they had no experience.
yea they fired my dad too in europe
Congrats.
I wasn't even old when they pushed me out. I was given a choice to go live in banjo land or leave.
Something only mentioned very quickly by the video: the waving of rights to class action and the right to sue in open court are linked to the agreement an employee signs in order to receive a severance package, which are basically bribes to leave quietly. If an employee feels strongly that they are being wrongfully terminated, they can still choose to not accept the package.
Great piece of reporting
IBM is now an Indian company head quartered in USA.
hehe, they don't care about anyone. Once labour cost increases in India, they going to replace them with Africans or Filipinos
'Relocate or resign' is a ridiculous loophole and illegal in many advanced economies. E.g. I think in the UK you have to offer re-employment within a 20-mile radius of the old job, or a reasonable severance package if that's not available.
Companies don't want to pay older workers who have seniority. Simple as that.
Indeed this is somewhat true. Both my uncle and aunt worked for IBM and yes, they were "fired" by their teams being sold to technology teams such as Lenovo and San Mina. After Sa Mina deliberately fired my uncle he managed to get a job that, fortunately for him, got him back into IBM.
Hang on, if the 20,000 job cuts to over 40s was 60% of job cuts in the last five years, isn't that roughly proportional? If 40% of the cuts in the last five years were to people under 40, there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence of ageism. Furthermore, the points system referred to further in the video is based on length of time in a particular "job level", NOT the total amount of time in the company, meaning people were getting more points if they had been promoted recently, and less if they hadn't been promoted in a significant period of time (rather than because they had been with the company the longest). The legal stuff does indeed seem very fishy, but I think statistically the case in this video is a little unconvincing.
you are voxing wrong: be less critical and more outraged!
It is harder to get promoted as you gain experience and rise through the ranks. So if you give fewer points to people who have not been promoted in a while, you are likely getting rid of many good employees who are performing well in their jobs but have no pathway to promotion in their business unit. Meanwhile, younger workers are, to some extent, protected because it is easier to get promoted at the lower rungs of the organization. An up or out system makes sense in the military, where people are expected to fight wars. It is inherently discriminatory in the civilian world.
good but expensive employees (expensive is the point)
Al Quinn Yep, everyone wants excellence on the cheap.
I don't think it was stated that *all* older workers were fit for their role. IBM has almost 400K workers. If half of them were over 40 then that 20K reduction (even assuming it occurred in a single year) means that only 10% of employees in that age group were let go. The relevant question is not whether the median 40+ employee is a good one, but rather, how effective are the worst 10% of employees in that age range performing.
In large old tech companies, you get raises and bonuses until you are too expensive compared to the work you do. Its not the workers fault - who is going to say no to more money. Its a dumb system.
I was involved in this 'restructuring' and 'downsizing' ..left and came back as a consultant... I was able to facilitate the removal of UPPER managers there using the same techniques used on me.. and personally, and proudly, torpedoed the steps they would have needed to take to become an amazon or Google. I did what I could to speed up the decline. You are welcome.
My mother has worked for them for a long time and is now a remote worker that job has given our family so much and I thank IBM
Thank you for this.
Although limited in its usefulness for my career, it does remind me never to invest my heart and soul to a company. My own personal projects are a better, more fulfilling use of my time in this world.
They've been doing this much longer than this video suggests
My father was on the cutting edge of the tech industry. He's past 60 now. He says what took him years to research and innovate and put on the market often gets summarized into a few semesters at school or a few months in the workforce. This means that younger, cheaper employees often quickly gain the skills that older, more expensive employees have. In a popular industry with a lot of college graduates, older employees need to expect a lot of cheaper competition.
What the video doesn’t talk about is the work culture of ibm, their employees wrap up their personal identity in ibm; consider themselves “ibmers”. Even after laid off and rehired elsewhere they form cliques with the other ibmers there and wish they still worked at ibm. In many cases ibm hires generationally from the same family, with strong loyalty. That’s part of why getting pushed out hurts so much.
IBM: The "international" means we worked with Nazis!
Considering that the computers were used to handle the logistics of mass murder, I would say yes...but only if Fanta was used to drown people and Volvos were designed to carry as many people to their deaths as possible.
Capitalism should have its limits...but money supersedes any concept of right and wrong.
"Imagine it's 1980"
I can't .
I tried. I still can't.
I'm 15
My grandpa was actually one of them. He worked for them for so many years too.
How is it legal to make someone sign away their right to take IBM to court in return for severance?
Every call center does this and in Mexico they literally say "we'll only hire if your between 20 and 35 years old"
between 20-35 and preferably very light skinned too. the pool is small. its hard out there
Lechiffresix six oh yeah half my coworkers are American born the other half in people that grew up in the US. Rarely anyone that grew in Mexico gets in. One of the requirements is to have "native English"
Lechiffresix six light skinned for a call center?
sophia, they do not like human diversity even when the talent pool is large and varied.they have a system that filters out mexicans in a way that enrages me.their hiring and guidelines are over the top racist. speaking english is not enough, you have to be "native".
@Troy yup! but this is about how the business wants to be perceived on the grounds when the clients come on site.They want to model the look of the staff and buildings to middle of america. I was right there in the boarding room when some of the decisions were made. My clout = ZERO
So the people IBM eliminated age 40+ made up 60% of their job cuts? That doesn't seem very biased... Also, your title says 20k older workers, but the video says 60% of 20k, which is only 12k. Which is it?
It says that it’s 60% of it’s total workforce, not 60% of 20k
It's not only IBM. My dad has been dealing with this issue for years with many large companies
Fascinating. My grandfather was an IBM employee in the UK. he was laid off at some point in his late 50's after workign there most of his life. I don't know if this was the same thing but this is something new to me.
The ageism in these comments is astounding. People in tech learn new skills constantly. Note that the video showed that older workers with excellent reviews for years, including recent years, were being let go. Did you actually watch it?
I am loosing my mind with the ageist comment. i am tapping my foot on the floor with anger. these kids will grow up by the middle of next decade and the next clueless batch will step in and tell them " er.. adapt or scram", but they are born with the fresh new technology on their hands, which will also age by the middle of next decade. these are young imbeciles.
Ageism is common in my field mechanical engineering. I'd advise anyone entering the field to get their professional license asap so when (not if) they get screwed over in their late 50s they can freelance and not be forced into early retirement.
damn, I work for IBM for 4 years now in Bulgaria.
I think I took one of those jobs ...
Yeah, you did.
You can still sue if you sign documents like that. The document is admissible as evidence, but you they can't actually prevent you from going to court.
Do this with Capital One Bank. My mom works there and is scared for her job. She’s in her 50’s
Younger workers are cheaper both in salary and benefits (esp. medical). All about money. Also, to save more, offshoring and H1b programs drive labor costs down further. This mean bigger and larger bonuses for the executive teams.
This isn't just an issue for protection of workers. There is also an issue of archiving there are computers built with tech from 50+ years ago with valuable information on them. The problem is that there are very few people working in the field today that know how these systems operate because they were fired, retired or died. As more information is stored online/digitally and the people working on them get older this will become a massive issue. Just imagine if MP4s or JPEGs are made obsolete in a few years and in 50 years there is no one who knows how to use them. It's a big problem with few easy solutions.
Ieuan Hunt, that's stupid. It's a bunch of 1s and 0s. Nobody will forget how to use it anytime soon, we'll be using binary by the time we're dead.
Ultimately, it is not all just 1s and zeroes. Itr's case of knowing the assembly language for a given system or even an old language like COBOL or FORTRAN. The National Archives have run into this in a small way. They've learned that they need to retain and maintain a device that will play the media that they have,. Films have been "lost" until a device was reverse-engineered to play the media. I'm old enough to recall Hollerith (punch) cards and magnetic tapes for storing data. Is it reasonable to expect companies to transfer all of their data over onto other media every time the media changes. No. This is why backwards compatibility is such an important concern.
The Mad Librarian thank you. I am not too familiar with technology but I am an avid Gamer and archiving old games is a huge problem. There are many games from the Atari 2600 era that are impossible to find and there are few people out there who can program them. And gaming is a relatively young invention. Imagine trying to work with Technology from the Cold War. It would be a nightmare.
And people wonder why I'm pissed with programmers who think they don't need to document their work.
And try telling me Savage Quest is irrelevant noise in video games- there still isn't another beat em up like it.
A lot of the reasons why the working performance evaluation scale is tipped against older works is to protect recent employees. You can expect someone who has just been hired to be as comfortable as knowledgeable in the workplace as someone who has been there for 30yrs and that’s good. Because otherwise it just make it harder for young people to get jobs, even more so than it already is. Once they would get hired they would constantly have to face fear of being fired because they can’t perform as good as someone who has been there 20plus yrs. in the workforce experienced works eventually do need to get replaced and that’s just how it works.
back in the eighties and before, IBM was pretty much a monopoly, high margin business, no competitors... now market forces have changed a lot, IBM has now to face lots of competitors, hardware is increasingly becoming a commodity.... Big Blue golden days are way behind
"Arbitration" = Private court
So, 60% of the workers they fired were over 40? How is that systematically getting rid of older workers? That seems like a perfect balance between firing younger and older workers?
Meneer jeroen, 40 is old by current standards .
But then why make them sign away their rights to sue and fight for a fair case?
Ian Ccc because lawsuits are more expensive than arbitration...notice that employees were given the option to take a retirement package only if they arbitrated. Probably the retirement package is cheaper than IBM gearing for lawsuits.
Yeah, if you've ever worked for a corporation of any size, you quickly learn how big of a PITA lawsuits are (patent and copyright trolls, clumsy people falling down on your premises, butthurt former employees...). It's easier to pay the severance and settle up then than to have the constant fear of a new plague of lawsuits. If a RIFed employee has a grievance, they can always refuse to sign for the severance package, but I presume most want to have their cake and eat it too.
Because they were determining who to fire with a system that was biased against older workers.
My Dad was just let go from IBM after 37 years with the company. This Vox piece really hit home...
Doesn’t surprise me. A lot of senior workers who were let go before they could collect retirement are now greeters at Walmart
Happy weed day y’all
Mister Biscuit word. I'm lit. you lit?
Legit lit
Mister Biscuit you know it's also hitlers birthday
\/ /\/
I dont smoke but happy weed day nonetheless
Like any company that gets big over time it will push out old values..and employees
Amazon does this thing that if you don’t hit their targets, they make you sign a paper where you “promise to improve” if you don’t sign it, you basically are quitting with no benefits, if you keep struggling with the metrics after signing, they lay you off for “not adhering to your contract” hence, fired with no benefits
@@jo9732 yeah, but also shows the core issue...lack of proper labour laws that protect employees. I mean, even Afghanistan has a better labour code
My mom currently works for IBM, shes worked there for as long as I can remember. She wont tell me but I've overheard conversations where she thinks she'll be one of the many that are let go in 2019. Considering shes the only one in our house that works, i'm not really sure how my family will make it.
brianna b. - Get a job. Lazy asses. Why is your mom the only one pulling money in.
According to this video 60% of their job cuts were to people aged 40 or older. The median age of workers in the US is 42. Taking out workers under 20 (who IBM isn't hiring), the median age goes up 43.6. So people over 40 don't make much less than 60% of the workforce. VOX is making a problem where one doesn't exist. Feel free to check the numbers - www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11b.htm
A pox on IBM and others. I’m over 40. Multiple degrees with too much experience of limited value working in IT. What message does this send to the kids? What do they study. Everything is going to India.
Pascal 0 kinda
Pascal 0 or getting automated, in any case kids should choose a major that will always require humans to do the work and after college find a job with good job security.
Nothing is coming here man! We are also struggling here.
That's a given, but I still don't understand why some people won't believe that to be a fact. IBM couldn't adapt to the test paced technological revolution at the turn of the millenium and now they aren't as huge anymore because of that.
They are smarter in China, India Japan and Korea ? They Are !! They have better schools !! And the young people don't hang out all the time, with alcohol, drugs and sex ! The USA has set back itself and will be a 3rd world country in 20 years from now.
So why did they fire older workers? Not answered...
Back before soc sec, if you were over 40, you could not get work - they ended up in horrible poor houses. Now they want to raise age for soc sec and not keep or hire older workers, how is that going to work out in long run? Great thank you for American workers who worked and brought in production profits, only to be thrown away when money can be saved. The so called invisible hand at work, only for supply side.
The future is now, old man
Jeffrey Vauxhall idiot
My dad use to work for ibm and left for amazon lmao
You mean your father ? "my dad" , how old are you , 7 ? tsssk tsssk
Lechiffresix six 15 lmao and he’s 45
Why did this even bother you?
I saw my father unemployed for quite a long time and I don’t wish such experience to anyone.
Does this have anything to do with the fact that in Us the employers are somehow responsible for providing their employees with health care? And older people are viewed as more costly?