4 ms·

Earlier rounds of job losses were often replaced with offshoring and classic wage arbitrage, but this time feels different. A lot of the companies are cutting j

Earlier rounds of job losses were often replaced with offshoring and classic wage arbitrage, but this time feels different. A lot of the companies are cutting jobs, without the expectation to replace them (at all). I think ageism will play a part in the selection process, but not always because of the age directly, rather the older staff may have larger pay, pension and benefits costs.

YZF 10y ago
All these companies are under pressure to grow their revenue. Guess what- they won't be able to do this without hiring. While some companies are reducing their workforce others are growing, some of this is because market share is switching. Traditional business losing to the cloud for example. There is more software work today than at any point in history. This is only going one way. Until AI will be able to develop software at least. With respect to age while there are pockets of ageism I think most of the big players and some of the smaller don't have a problem with anyone's age. There are still a lot of companies who can't find enough people regardless of age and I don't think there's a huge salary differential between someone really good in their late 20's to 30's and someone really good who is older. So there's really no economic incentive for ageism. Yes, you can hire someone out of school for cheaper but you need to invest a lot more in them and then they disappear for a more lucrative job...
- askyourmother 10y ago
  A certain firm got rid of all their expensive staff, who must just sit there all day, being expensive, probably not doing much, except for you know - having about 200 years worth of experience on the core clearing system that was a critical part of the system. A small part was offshored, but most roles cut. Sure enough, soon enough, said important system fails, offshore reduced size team without the benefit of experience on this 40year mainframe app, could not solve it. I know one of devs there who made a phenomenal day rate there fixing that mess. Big firms are greedy and dumb. IT is a cost centre too them, every tech employee is a moocher sucking cash that could be used in yet another stock buy back to try and keep the stock price high a bit longer so the board can cash out and run.

YZF 10y ago

All these companies are under pressure to grow their revenue. Guess what- they won't be able to do this without hiring. While some companies are reducing their workforce others are growing, some of this is because market share is switching. Traditional business losing to the cloud for example. There is more software work today than at any point in history. This is only going one way. Until AI will be able to develop software at least. With respect to age while there are pockets of ageism I think most of the big players and some of the smaller don't have a problem with anyone's age. There are still a lot of companies who can't find enough people regardless of age and I don't think there's a huge salary differential between someone really good in their late 20's to 30's and someone really good who is older. So there's really no economic incentive for ageism. Yes, you can hire someone out of school for cheaper but you need to invest a lot more in them and then they disappear for a more lucrative job...

askyourmother 10y ago
A certain firm got rid of all their expensive staff, who must just sit there all day, being expensive, probably not doing much, except for you know - having about 200 years worth of experience on the core clearing system that was a critical part of the system. A small part was offshored, but most roles cut. Sure enough, soon enough, said important system fails, offshore reduced size team without the benefit of experience on this 40year mainframe app, could not solve it. I know one of devs there who made a phenomenal day rate there fixing that mess. Big firms are greedy and dumb. IT is a cost centre too them, every tech employee is a moocher sucking cash that could be used in yet another stock buy back to try and keep the stock price high a bit longer so the board can cash out and run.