28 ms·

Cutting ‘Old Heads’ at IBM

443 points by mwexler 9y ago

tyingq 9y ago
" IBM has eliminated more than 20,000 American employees ages 40 and over, about 60 percent of its estimated total U.S. job cuts during those years" Combine this with the "new tech leaders"[1] affinity for hiring only young people and it's getting tough out there. Fortunately, non-technical fortune 500 companies seem still open to us grey hairs in their IT orgs. [1] Google, FB, Twitter, Uber, etc.
- mipmap04 9y ago
  The company I'm at has been hiring these ex-big blue individuals in droves and it's been awesome. Tons of talent combined with some truly remarkable experience.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    That's reassuring. For a few months I was seriously considering dying my hair, solely for job purposes. Not something I'd ever do for pure vanity. It borders on ridiculous. Turned out I didn't need to, but the fact I had to consider it...
    - seibelj 9y ago
      I don't think it's that ridiculous. You buy a new suit to look professional, shave for a new date, why is dying your hair that crazy? We all do plenty of things for appearance purposes.
      - tyingq 9y ago
        I see your point, but shaving, clothes, etc, aren't altering the natural appearance of my body. It feels similar to a woman feeling some need for breast augmentation. Silly and superficial, and lots of work to please others for no reason.
        ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
        Breast augmentation has been proven in studies to result in higher income over the long run. So maybe superficial, but definitely not silly.
        tyingq 9y ago
        Not arguing that it might "work". Dying my hair might have raised my salary too. But both are still silly to me. Similar, tall people make more money statistically. Real? Yes. But still silly.
        gaius_baltar 9y ago
        > Breast augmentation has been proven in studies to result in higher income over the long run. So maybe superficial, but definitely not silly. Did this study check for the obvious possibility of women of higher income being more inclined to pay for a breast augmentation? I'm sure any serious journal will require this before accepting such paper, but the amount of junk science being published in humanities journals forces me to ask.
      - 9889095r3jh 9y ago
        There's a big difference between wearing a suit and dying your gray hair. Dying your gray hair hides your age. Age is a protected class. It's illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of age. It's not illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of what suit you wear. Can we all agree that nobody should have to dye their hair to get a job? The fact that people on this site act like this is normal is very disturbing.
        fencepost 9y ago
        I'm torn on the question of dye - not so much for my hair (where a braid to the middle of my back is more likely a concern than silver temples) but for my beard which has by now turned mostly white. I'm half wishing I'd grown it out and bleached the last few bits this past winter to start establishing as a part-time Santa. "No, it's white because I'm also a volunteer Santa during the season."
        snowwrestler 9y ago
        Sadly, at least in the U.S. it is normal for many professional women to feel like they need to dye their hair. It is part of the general U.S. cultural bias toward youth in women, which is pretty obvious in popular media but also makes itself felt in the workforce. Grey hairs can start showing up as early as late 20s for some people. I work with a number of women over 35 and I'm having a hard time thinking of one with a single grey hair showing. For a few I'm friends with, I know that dyeing their hair feels like an important part of maintaining their professional appearance. Even Ginni Rommetty, CEO of IBM, probably dyes her hair. She has blonde hair without a strand of grey showing, which would be pretty extraordinary for someone who is 60.
        jessaustin 9y ago
        That's nothing compared to women who read the news, sports, etc. on TV, most of whom have to get breast implants. And yes, it is the older women with thicker torsos who have to do this to preserve their "feminine" appearance. Young women can often get by, just by being slim.
        9889095r3jh 9y ago
      - ema 9y ago
        I think the difference is that wearing a new suit and having a shaved face signals that one cares enough to make the effort to appear neat. Dying ones hear (with a natural color) however is a modification of one's appearance that one whishes to remain unnoticed. Not that I think looking neat is super important (my own appearance is just one step above "hobo") but it feels acceptable to me that some jobs require it because it correlates with other personality traits which are important like self-discipline and not being a "precious snowflake" for example.
        gowld 9y ago
        It correlates with traits like being a dependent conformist, which is generally good for employees you want to exploit.
        itronitron 9y ago
        if the dye job is noticeable then it just looks like the person is stuck in the past and will amplify the ageism. It should be easier for women to dye their hair well (so that it is not noticed as such) because a) women of all ages changes their hair color, b) they are willing to shell out the big bucks for a professional, and c) they are less likely to have graying facial hair :{>
    - depsin 9y ago
      I started my tech career at the age of 18 and my colleagues on their 30s and 40s. I rarely shave those days to create an appearance, I am mature enough to participate in serious tech discussions. Now I am nearing 40 and this story worry me. I may need to do the other way around to stay relevant.
  - exikyut 9y ago
    At face value, your company could make some noises about how awesome things are and win some friends. YMMV in practice though. Maybe it could be established that these employees are encouraged to make small bits of noise in certain ways. (Translation: I'd like to hear more, even though I'm young myself FWIW)
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - at-fates-hands 9y ago
    The group I work with at my current gig just hired two older devs to work with us. One guy came from Lockheed Martin, the other spent most of his career in finance at various banks and investment companies. Both have ungodly amounts of experience with .Net, Java and Javascript. Just being able to have them around has given our team an ocean of knowledge to draw from. I know I'm a better developer just from asking for help and bouncing stuff off of them. You can't put a price on stuff like this.
    - tyingq 9y ago
      That's exactly the value I was alluding to. Is paying these folks, say, 20% more than someone in their 30's really a boat anchor, or is it an asset?
      - volkl48 9y ago
        Realistically speaking, the answer to that question depends on the current makeup of your employees. If most of your workforce is 50+, you probably don't need more highly experienced people and are probably overpaying for some of the more basic tasks some are doing. It's also not great for continuity if you're set to have large segments of your workforce retiring in a small window of time. On the other hand, if your workforce skews young and inexperienced, bringing in some people with much more experience is probably going to be a valuable resource for them that'll help everyone perform better, and will help you avoid costly mistakes.
        tyingq 9y ago
        That's a good observation. Managers should be maintaining a reasonable balance.
      - scholia 9y ago
        That's not what's happening. A decade ago, IBM had 130,00 staff in the USA and very few in India. Today, IBM has 130,00 staff in India and it refuses to say how many are left in the USA. It's not really a question of saving a bit of money (20%, say) on American employees. IBM is just shipping jobs to India at a terrific rate because the cost of employing Indians is, in comparison, very very low. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/ibm-shifts-center-of-gravity-half-a-world-away-to-india/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/ibm-shifts-center-of-g...
  - Spoom 9y ago
    Same here, and our experience with them has thus far been great. Many times IBM doesn't know what they're giving up -- or they simply don't care.
    - HillaryBriss 9y ago
      Could it be that the leadership of IBM doesn't really know what's needed for the future? Could it be that, being clueless, these high level managers are merely guessing and assuming that young workers are the only ones who can lead to profit growth? Could it be that these high level managers fully expect these younger workers to lead and manage -- to do their jobs for them?
      - scholia 9y ago
        IBM is just getting rid of Americans with high salaries, health insurance and pensions and replacing them with much cheaper workers in India. It now has far more workers in India than it does in the USA. Of course, IBM is also destroying the skills and experience that customers are paying them to provide, but it's happy to get a short-term gain and ignore the long-term pain. The people in charge will have stashed away their millions and left before most of the ordure hits the rotating device. Bear in mind that IBM's turnover today is less than it was in 2000, and it's had five or six years of annual decline. As a company, it's failing badly, so perhaps it's unrealistic for it plan for a future that might not happen.
        chid 9y ago
        I'd argue in IBM's eyes it's short-term pain (increased training costs/doubling up on resources/lawsuits, communication/teething issues) with the view for long term gain (lower long term costs / liabilities). That's not to say I agree or disagree with the approach but it's definitely not an easy decision to make.
- RandallBrown 9y ago
  What percentage of IBM employees were age 40 and over? It's not really age discrimination if these cuts are applying equally to everyone.
buro9 9y ago
The important bit: How did IBM get around the legal requirement for the disclosures? With a move that even critics acknowledge is ingenious. The company’s pre-2014 layoff documents required employees receiving severance to waive all bias claims based on “race, national origin, ancestry, color, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, pregnancy, marital status, age... disability, medical condition, or veteran status.” The new documents deleted “age” from the waiver list. In fact, they specifically said employees were not waiving their right when it came to age and could pursue age discrimination cases against the company. But, the new documents added, employees had to waive the right to take their age cases to court. Instead, they had to pursue them through private arbitration. What’s more, they had to keep them confidential and pursue them alone. They couldn’t join with other workers to make a case. Forced arbitration continues to be an awful thing that companies foist on employees to strip them of their rights.
- gcb0 9y ago
  wow! I had no idea forced arbitration could trump labour laws. ...oh wait, US has none of that.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    The irony being that it was one of the countries once upon a time known for actually having them (starting in 1886).
- venuur 9y ago
  FYI, your quote renders as a fixed-width font code block and does not word wrap on mobile. It makes the text very hard to read. For mobile user’s benefit, a different quotation method would be better.
  - notyourwork 9y ago
    I agree but this is how a quoted block is rendered on this site. Its fine for desktop but almost completely unusable on a mobile phone since you have to scroll horizontally to read each line.
mistermann 9y ago
On one hand, while harsh, laying off older workers (even the ones who have kept up to date on technology) makes good economic sense. On the other hand, not all global companies are limited by the type of worker's rights legislation noted in the article. While this survival of the fittest, hyper-capitalism approach will optimize return on investment and technological innovation, I suspect it is also ~destroying the careers of many high achievers who would likely have outperformed in other fields without having their careers derailed. Does anyone see a way to reconcile this?
- tyingq 9y ago
  "laying off older workers...makes good economic sense" Perhaps you're just quoting bad, but real, existing policy, but this is pure bullshit. Experience has value. I'm surprised also, that younger developers aren't concerned about this. Do they think they are going to retire in their 30's, or that they are somehow more innovative or more smart than those that preceded them?
  - TACIXAT 9y ago
    >Do they think they are going to retire in their 30's That is the plan, yes.
    - tyingq 9y ago
      Heh, appreciate the honesty. I guess there is a temporary market condition where that might seem realistic to some.
    - 52-6F-62 9y ago
      Ah, shame. 30's here. Hint: no retiring yet. In fact, not sure why you'd want to, but for escaping the daily grind for someone else. The well is endless. Drink deep. Also not sure why its worth selling some of the best, most energetic years of one's life to something one cares so little about that one wants to enter into it on an escape trajectory.
      - 9y ago
rb808 9y ago
I dont know about this. Its clear that IBM's products aren't as good as Amazon/Google, is this because their workforce? I can see AWS & Google has much younger devs who are fluent in more modern systems. I really have to retire before 50 because it doesn't look good.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  > I really have to retire before 50 because it doesn't look good. I'll make a killing as an old fashioned java developer at that age, probably.
  - kls 9y ago
    COBOL developers did just fine, you may not get to work in the new hot tech but there is a huge market for aging entrenched technologies. You average Java developer is late 30's to 40's and it's not uncommon to see whole teams of 40 something developers in a java shop. There is life outside the valley.
    - le-mark 9y ago
      Can confirm, I'm in such a team now.
    - twunde 9y ago
      I'll mention that COBOL devs are no longer doing just fine. I had an ex-coworker that had trouble finding well-paying COBOL jobs. A lot of it has been offshored or outsourced to low-paid consulting companies like Tata and the like.
      - le-mark 9y ago
        I have anecdotal evidence of this as well. A local company that formerly employed thousands of cobol devs has had aggressive layoffs and offshoring over the past 10 years. Lots and lots of unemployed cobol devs here.
      - praneshp 9y ago
oldslowcorp 9y ago
Could it be a case of correlation vs causation? Age discrimination is bad. Firing employees because of their age, or maybe more cynically, because if their elevated salaries, is a shit thing to do. But what about getting rid of the employees who hold the company back? The ones who drag their feet. The ones who are more concerned about protecting their political standing than accomplishing good work. The ones who try to avoid change, sometimes literally defended by "Well that's the way we've always done it." That breed of employee tends to have been at the company for a long time. Often that means they're older in age, too. Making a clean sweep of folks like that could appear to be age discrimination while actually being due to performance.
- youdontknowtho 9y ago
  That's why I support a more robust welfare state. The reason that people are in positions like you describe is because of the dire consequences of losing employment. Being older doesn't mean that you don't know how to innovate or look for ways to improve the area you work in. People become super cautious because of the mortgage and college debt, car payments, on and on and on. Their "actual job" is to get money for those things. If losing employment didn't mean complete loss of livelihood, the only people working at a place would be there because they actually wanted to be there. They would be interested in performance because it might be rewarded, not because failing would be punished.
  - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
    I think that’s a good point. The chilling effects of ruin without a safety net make it hard for cteative individuals to develop their skills - and their economic potential.
- cableshaft 9y ago
  These people don't have to be very old at all, actually. I've seen plenty of young people start acting like this at a company after working there only a year or two. That being said, if it is an older person doing this, then it can be difficult to let them go without it appearing to be due to age discrimination. But I've seen enough layoffs to know that for a lot of companies, it's all about saving money by getting rid of these people, not about their performance, at least every time I've seen it happen. I've even been told directly in a layoff it was because I was one of the higher paid people in the company (it was a game studio, so I still wasn't being paid all that much). I guess I was old for someone in the game industry, since most people start fresh out of school and burn out of the industry in less than five years. My manager got laid off as well, who was in his 60s, did excellent at his job, and had tons of amazing experience (I wish I worked on even just one of the cool games he was lead on), but it was definitely because he was one of the highest paid people there (if not the highest), not because of anything else.
TomMasz 9y ago
I just participated in a "Voluntary Reduction In Force" at (company I can't mention for legal reasons). It was applied across all of R&D but only people with 15 years or more of service were allowed to apply. We're being paid a week of salary and healthcare for each year worked so it's not too bad. But even so it was abundantly clear who they were targeting.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  One week of salary per year served is actually pretty bad. That money is gone quickly. In my company it used to be 4 weeks per year. Now it's two.
  - cableshaft 9y ago
    Wow 4 weeks? I didn't know there was companies like that out there, especially now. Our company reduced it to 1 week per year (claimed it was the 'standard', and it would save them money so they could spend it on being so innovative elsewhere), then reduced 401k matching from them paying once per quarter to you have to be employed on December 31 of that year or they don't have to match for the entire year (crazy, I know), and then after they got those two things in place started axing tens of thousands of people's jobs, and saved tons of money in the process, I'm sure. These policy changes also lead to people voluntarily resigning and thus giving them lower layoff numbers too. I'm probably not sticking around much longer myself, but I had a few too many life changes (like buying a house) that kept me from leaving earlier.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      I am sure the top guys in your company took a significant amount of the savings as bonus.
    - CommandStrip 9y ago
      When Microsoft did the test layoffs in 2014, I believe they included one month of salary per year of service.
    - 9y ago
graycat 9y ago
IBM has one main problem: They are a sick culture. One consequence is that they are a sick company. Their sickness causes them to do self-destructive things which makes them an even sicker company. Here are some parts of the sick IBM culture: (1) Marketing. "You might think that IBM is a technology company or a computer company, but you would be wrong. IBM is a marketing company: They look for opportunities to sell. They might get into grocery stores tomorrow if they thought that there was money to be made there." -- IIRC from a manager of a large IBM branch office. Same guy, IIRC: "You might think that IBM research comes up with powerful new technology. IBM development turns this technology into good, new products. Then IBM marketing sells these products and makes money. That's exactly backwards: Instead, IBM marketing comes up with what new products can be sold at a profit. IBM development builds these products and gets them ready for the market. If development has trouble, they may go to IBM research for solutions. What IBM charges for the products has nothing to do with what IBM's costs are: Instead, IBM sells the products for what the customers are willing to pay." Consequences: (A) IBM respects people who do well managing marketing efforts. (B) IBM does not much respect technical people or people not in management. (C) The decision makers in IBM are marketing people who are not very technical. So, these people are slow to see the market and marketing potential of new technology. (D) Long IBM's approach to what to sell was that their main customers, large banks, insurance companies, manufacturing companies, would grab their IBM marketing representatives and scream about problems they had. With enough screaming with clearly enough market potential, finally IBM would develop and sell a solution. (2) IBM Management In this way, part of the IBM culture was the primacy of the middle and upper managers. High stability was valued. Innovation was not. The higher managers had staffs to thoroughly study each decision. Then the manager had plenty of cover for the decisions they did make. IIRC, an early remark of IBM CEO Lou Gerstner was that "IBM is the most arrogant, inwardly directed, process oriented company I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of companies.". (3) Stuck with Mainframes So, these attitudes caused IBM to miss out on essentially everything past 3270 terminals connected to CICS (customer information control system -- for building and running interactive applications, e.g., for order entry) on an IBM 370 family mainframe. So, sure, can see this situation as a case of "The Innovator's Dilemma". I.e., IBM was slow to get into lines of business that would compete, under sell, undercut, beat IBM's mainframe, cash cow business. (4) IBM Missed out Long a standard attitude in IBM was that IBM needed only high margin businesses and should not try to compete in low margin businesses. So, with this thinking, IBM passed on the businesses of Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Google, Qualcomm, Apple, etc. So, IBM missed out on the growth of TCP/IP, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, the Internet, Web browsers, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, etc. With high irony, IBM long made the crucial, core chips used in the high end routers of Cisco and Juniper. Why? IBM had a microelectronics division, and they saw those chips as a business opportunity. But IBM did not pick up that ball and run with it to compete against Cisco or Juniper in high end routers. Due to J. Cocke and his 801 computer, IBM Research was early in RISC. There was some usage of RISC in some IBM mainframe I/O subsystems and in IBM's AIX workstation lines, but RISC became a big thing (e.g., the current Hennessy, Patterson Turing award that claims that now 99% of processors are RISC) but apparently not for IBM. IBM was ahead in magnetic recording with giant magneto resistance disk heads, but Western Digital, etc. were successful with disks but not IBM. IBM had high end research on architecture, algorithms, and software for high end disk clusters, but, IIRC, EMC made the big bucks there, not IBM. IBM Research was early into "wearable" computers, but Apple got rich with the iPhone, etc., not IBM. At one time, IBM actually ran all of the Internet, but they never saw the opportunity there until too late. IBM had an early Web browser but let others get big leverage in the browser wars. At one time, IBM had the TCP/IP stack in chip hardware, but they failed to make big bucks with that. At one time, maybe still, much of the backbone of the Internet needs an IBM-invented amplifier that amplifies the optical signals on the optical fibers without converting back to digital; that was great leverage over the backbone of the Internet, but IBM didn't take that opportunity. The chip manufacturers are only just now moving to extreme UV for their light sources, but parts of IBM saw the point back in the 1980s or so and built a cyclotron as an X-ray source for a microelectronics lithography light source. Today there are lots of chip companies -- Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, etc. -- and several high end chip foundries but apparently IBM is not a major player there. IBM was early into social computing, with Prodigy, etc., but AOL and later Facebook did well. Prodigy was also with Sears and for on-line selling, but Amazon made the big bucks there. IBM was early into really good work in virtual machines, e.g., the 360/67 of 1967 and its CP/67 virtual machine software. But VMware made the big bucks with virtual machines. IBM was a leader in relational database, with System R and DB/2 and the software on the System/38, etc., but Oracle, SQL Server, etc. are the database success stories now. IBM had object oriented software in firmware in 1970 or so, but apparently IBM never became a leader in object oriented computing. PCs? IBM was essentially the leader, but Microsoft and Intel made the big bucks from PCs, not IBM. Cloud computing? I've heard of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google but much less about IBM. Laser printers? Same song, next verse. (5) Defeat from Jaws of Victory It goes on this way: In plain terms, from 1980 to 1990, IBM was essentially the technology leader in essentially everything in computing, but the IBM top managers never saw how to make money with that technology. So, 1990 computer and Internet technology, the open door for likely the biggest step up in technology, economic productivity, and more in all of human history, and IBM was determined to ignore it. It appears that generally IBM is a massive case of organizational behavior goal subordination: The middle and upper managers want to crush anything new; they are not successful in this effort outside IBM but quite successful inside IBM. For many years, the IBM division managers would meet at the Armonk HQ, give their financial results, nicely ahead of projections, and project even better results for the next year. But near 1990, somehow the results were commonly less good than the projections. The consensus was that "God had ceased to smile on IBM". (6) For Individuals For a worker in the US economy, for a good job, income, and financial security, it is their responsibility to get that done. A very common approach is to start and run a successful business. An electrician who has a truck and an assistant and who stays busy can do better financially than 80% of the US IBM employees. Same for a guy who has several crews mowing grass and plowing snow; same for a guy doing well running several McDonald's, Burger Kings, or Wendy's. Same for a dentist. A K-12 school teacher or a nurse has a more stable career than nearly anyone in IBM. (7) Firing People IBM fires lots of people because IBM management doesn't know how to organize work for those people in ways that make money. IBM likes to fire older people so that they can blame the failures on the older people being "behind" in technology. Also the managers don't like the older, technical people as subordinates because the older people know too much and can challenge the manager. In particular, the managers don't like technical people and don't want any technical people who know more about technology than the managers. Since the managers with respect are marketing people with poor technical qualifications, those marketing managers like to fire to older experts in technology. It's dysfunctional organizational behavior goal subordination, arrogant, inwardly directed, process oriented, etc. (8) Future of IBM The solution? Sure, Darwin is on the case: Slowly IBM will shrink and disappear. Maybe near the end, Bill Gates will buy all of it and put what is left of it in a museum.
pjdemers 9y ago
Pay off your mortgage. When you get pushed out of the workforce because of age (and you will), having no rent and no mortgage puts the situation in a different perspective. It becomes more of a beginning than an end.
- adstr123 9y ago
  Simple as that!
- mushbino 9y ago
  Paid it off just now. Thanks for the advice!
- pcwalton 9y ago
  This is terrible advice even for the tiny fraction of people who can actually follow it.
  - thetrumanshow 9y ago
    Can you elaborate on your reasoning?
    - pcwalton 9y ago
      Tax advantages, and the fact that you shouldn't put your entire net worth into a single illiquid asset.
      - telchar 9y ago
        What tax advantages? I'm going to get exactly zero benefit this year for all the mortgage interest I've paid; I'm probably going to take the newly increased standard deduction whereas last year I saved thousands by itemizing.
        pcwalton 9y ago
        In my comment above, "tax advantages" is short for "tax advantages that may or may not apply depending on your individual financial situation, but should be carefully considered before making a huge financial decision like paying off a mortgage".
arcanearts 9y ago
This is nothing new for them. My father started at IBM in 1968, and was forced into "voluntary" early retirement in 1993. He at least got to keep his pension, but if he hadn't gone voluntarily and opted to stick it out like some of his colleagues, he would have been let go in the following months and lost everything.
- speby 9y ago
  How would he have lost everything? The pension would stay no matter what.
  - drdeadringer 9y ago
    > The pension would stay no matter what. I have a doubt, because "business in America".
  - arcanearts 9y ago
    The way he explained it to me was if he took the early retirement he would receive the pension, if he had stayed and gotten laid off he would not have gotten the pension.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  Back then people at least got some good severance and a pension. The current generation will be forced out with nothing if they haven't saved up a huge amount of money.
  - raesene9 9y ago
    I'd echo this, the old IBM redundancies weren't necessarily bad for the recipients. My uncle got made redundant by IBM in the 90's having spent his whole career there from university. He got a pretty good severance package and pension, which he's now been able to draw for 25+ years...
shineymetal 9y ago
This is exactly why I would never consider a full time job here. I was an intern and watched my entire team get laid off regardless of performance. Older workers were most definitely targeted.
draw_down 9y ago
We all know how it works in our industry. I do find it bitterly ironic that all our diversity efforts (which I otherwise fully support) rarely or never even touch on this issue. The one form of discrimination everyone will face unless they die or leave tech. But, you know, labor costs.
justin66 9y ago
If you're old enough to remember IBM being a real tech (evil) empire, the striking thing is how much the swapping out of old career employees with young people and contractors has correlated with IBM floundering and the cool parts of the company being gradually replaced with services and... more services.
- Paperweight 9y ago
  """Services as a Service" as a Service" as a Service" (TM)
ScottAS 9y ago
IBM is an embarrassing company. They are not culling based on age, they are culling based on severe lack of skills and dated values. IBM is saturated with tech people who threw in their technical chops 20 years ago to become a salesperson. Everything they do, from their blockchain efforts to Watson, is so embarrassingly driven by oldschool sales/marketing people that they can't be taken seriously by technical decision makers at their customer companies. They no longer have the ability to lead their customers in technical decisions.
- fishbone 9y ago
  Does anyone else think that the IBM commercial where they talk about tracking a tomato with a blockchain is laughable? Or is it just me?
  - ScottAS 9y ago
    It's complete crap. The saddest part is that they do have some amazing technical minds behind the scenes. They give their stage to sleazy marketing and salespeople who have no idea what they're talking about way too often.
    - hfdgiutdryg 9y ago
      Sounds an awful lot like Microsoft.
      - rsuelzer 9y ago
        I think Microsoft has turned the corner.
        gaius 9y ago
        Yes - Azure is genuinely good
  - brandonmenc 9y ago
    One of the few companies [0] in the space that I find interesting is doing exactly that. Tracking the authenticity or safety of physical products changing many hands is a perfect application of distributed, tamper-proof databases. [0] https://www.provenance.org https://www.provenance.org
ScottAS 9y ago
IBM is an embarrassing company. They are not culling based on age, they are culling based on severe lack of skills and dated values. IBM is saturated with tech people who threw in their technical chops 20 years ago to become a salesperson. Everything they do, from their blockchain efforts to Watson, is so embarrassingly driven by oldschool sales/marketing people that they can't be taken seriously by technical decision makers at their customer companies.
FlyingSideKick 9y ago
I wonder if Amazon, Facebook and Google are using similar performance management tactics to drive the attrition of older workers? “A slide from a similar presentation prepared last spring for the same leaders called for “re-profiling current talent” to “create room for new talent.” Presentations for 2015 and 2016 for the 50,000-employee software group also included plans for “aggressive performance management” and emphasized the need to “maintain steady attrition to offset hiring.””
jorblumesea 9y ago
Completely anecdotal, but I've interviewed a few IBM lifers and veterans for positions outside IBM. Their skills were lacking, to say the least. It's unclear why. Perhaps when you joined IBM "back in the day" a CS degree was less important? Or maybe the business itself stressed other skills over technical proficiency? While ageism is a serious problem in the industry, I also don't think it's fair to equate seniority with competence. There are many wizard old heads, but not every old head is a wizard.
- mancerayder 9y ago
  A CS degree, you say? What in the world use is that other than jumpstarting the first couple of years of employment? And getting filtered past people who believe it is important? Maybe I'm wrong, but I've always seen some of these older companies as being big on hiring people from academia (and also military for some reason - it seems many of these folks have military backgrounds).
  - jorblumesea 9y ago
    Joining the industry in the 90s wasn't anything like joining it now, at least for entry level positions. Just saying, the industry was different back then and knowing fundamentals seemed less important than slinging code.
  - forapurpose 9y ago
    > A CS degree, you say? What in the world use is that Perhaps you can learn something.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
seymour333 9y ago
And they probably saved millions in wages while they were at it. Coming out of college as a mature student I saw so many of my younger classmates absolutely throwing themselves at the worst offers the local job pool presented. I kept telling them just don't accept, wait for a better offer, look elsewhere. The problem is, at least in the market I'm in, there seems to be a practice of wage fixing. It's the same bad offer everywhere. I talked to a few recruiters at those companies, asked some pointed questions about compensation that more experienced employees tend to ask, and watched them just shut down. It was less about the "millennial advantage" and more about the benefits of naivety on their bottom line. I get that having more work/life experience in general qualifies me for a slightly higher starting wage, but I held out and refused any offers from low ball employers and started $10k higher than most of my colleagues who graduated at the same time. It's horrible that this older demographic is being discriminated against and forced out of their jobs, but this isn't only about age discrimination. The goal isn't to acquire "digitally native" employees (not entirely). The goal is to save money on wages and lower the wage expectations of an entire generation of people. ...unless I'm wrong and everyone who replaced someone who was forced out is doing great and all those boomers were just becoming stagnant dead weight and deserved what they got.
- politips 9y ago
  boomers? The baby boom generation was born between the mid-1940s and 1960s. They're all in their late 60s and 70s now and most have long retired. The age-out demography we are talking about now generally are their children currently in their early-40s to early 50s. The dial-up generation.
  - seymour333 9y ago
    fair enough, don't know why I lump all the "olds" together like that. There has to be a better name for them than the dial-up generation. I grew up with dial-up and I'm not that old.
    - mixmastamyk 9y ago
      Gen X, while I'm not fond of it, is usually the term here. Grew up with Commodore 64, saw the birth of the web and built it up, now considered too expensive, etc.
smoll 9y ago
I'm not sure this is just IBM lacking the vision to see their older employees for the value that they truly hold, rather, they're just following the path of least resistance. I see this same sort of scenario playing out in other companies across the globe too; why should any company be innovative enough to value and empower older workers when they can just exploit young, naive talent? How do we prevent this exact same vicious cycle from playing out all over again in 25-30 years when Millennials are the grey-haired ones with an inability to "innovate" or "connect" with the younger generation? If anything, with the rapid pace of technology only accelerating over time, future generations will become irrelevant "old heads" on an even shorter timeline.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  Either that or the cycle stops due to being unsustainable. So instead of gray heads it will be most paid workers. Usually most paid for a reason that's correlated with achievement or experience.
lasermike026 9y ago
This speaks to me. https://youtu.be/yL7X3DTyS2Q https://youtu.be/yL7X3DTyS2Q
mankash666 9y ago
Among professional jobs, software is the only one where you go out of demand as you age. Doctors, lawyers, civil engineers, architects routinely peak in their 50s, but in tech if you haven't transitioned into management by 40, you're not valued anymore. How did this even come to be?
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  Seems to coincide with when 28 year-olds with beards took over every tech company, haha. Cheaper no doubt, and that is more important to most companies, more than quality. They first tried outsourcing to the other side of the world, but found too many timezones grinds productivity to a halt and so plan B, younger and cheaper became an explicit goal. Not just a tech thing either, focus on appearance is bordering on the extreme nowadays. Watched the "Willy Wonka…" movie from the early 70's with my daughter last night and was struck that most of the newscasters were silver haired and in their 60s, reminding me of Jerry Dunphy. Several of the stars had messy hair that needed combing, not necessarily in character. Many things were higher quality back when they let experienced folks work, and "allowed ugly people to make music," as it were.
- rankam 9y ago
  Software developers aren't considered in the same league as doctors, lawyers, civil engineers, or architects. Software developers are viewed as construction workers by most people and businesses.
  - acdha 9y ago
    This is going to upset a lot of developers who expect the boom to last forever. A ton of people think they’re on the same side as senior management because they get paid better than average and have been able to get better working conditions; very few people in management share this view. The brilliant thing was getting so many to buy into libertarian propaganda and actively fight against things like unionization or labor laws which would reduce the power imbalance.
- dalfonso 9y ago
  Outside of some of the mentioned reasons (20-somethings are cheaper, ageism, etc.), I think there's a lot of emphasis on staying up-to-date. In order to be "desirable" you need to consistently be learning about new technologies, languages, frameworks, etc. ON YOUR OWN TIME. As you get into age 30+, many people are married, have kids, have enough money to travel, etc. thus you probably aren't going to be as interested in reading programming blogs and watching tutorials.
qserpent 9y ago
If it's all about the money, companies should offer voluntary pay cuts. I know a few folks who'd take that over "voluntary" retirement any day.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
  It’s harder to hide the age bias if you cut pay.
  - jjnoakes 9y ago
    This only matters if it isn't about the money...
scarface74 9y ago
The dislocation caused by IBM’s cuts has been especially great because until recently the company encouraged its employees to think of themselves as “IBMers” and many operated under the assumption that they had career-long employment. I tell everyone -- don't drink the Kool-Aid. Never believe that a company has any loyalty and always keep an eye on the market. Even if you are paid well now and see that your job isn't gaining you marketable skills -- leave. At the end of the day, as a person in technology, your major resources are your technical skills. I will leave a company in a heartbeat if I see that the company's technical direction isn't in line with what the market wants. I'm in my 40s and biggest fear is being unemployable -- not being unemployed. I haven't had to do it yet, but hopefully, I would have the discipline to leave a job where I'm overpaid with respect to the market to take a job that pays a little less that keeps me competitive.
- archagon 9y ago
  I was surprised when I visited the Computer History Museum recently and discovered that IBM actually had its own rally song: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L9oh3gqOEKU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L9oh3gqOEKU
  - drdeadringer 9y ago
    I was surprised to visit the Computer History Museum and see VAX computers I had to work with on my first job right out of college... in 2005, for a defence firm. 1MB of RAM was a square foot of circuit board. I had a lot of questions about my future.
    - chasil 9y ago
      Our plant still runs mission critical VAX VMS TDMS applications. We junked our VAX 7000s about a decade ago and moved to the Charon emulator. Played with VAX VMS on Simh, but everyone was too scared to put any real data on it.
  - raesene9 9y ago
    heck they had a whole song book full of them https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/music/pdf/SB1.pdf https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/music/pdf/SB1.pd...
1290cc 9y ago
I'll offer a counter point to this, we hired a senior SVP from IBM about 2 years ago (he spent his entire career at IBM). IBM also tried to sue him when he left. My company is a "born in the cloud" company so we have values and an attitude that I would consider in alignment with modern, inclusive, customer positive values, etc. He passed interviews and all the numbers showed he was a high performer etc. We brought him on hoping he would use his experience to grow our cloud business into "the enterprise". What we found was we had hired a guy that scoffed at ideas like UX, frequently bullied his team and the extended team in calls. Would often go off on monologues and was extremely rigid in his top down approach to management. It was a complete culture shock to the team and customers. We understood that some of these things were part of the deal but what we didnt expect was a near zero openness to ideas. He had classic double speak of stating his door was always open to differing opinions or ideas but a week later he would be telling the company on conference calls that if people didn't like it there was the door. He brought in his entire exec team from IBM and things continued to go down hill from there. Some of his own team would make fun of our sales leaders until one of them called these guys out and discovered they had little to no understanding of how cloud pricing and subscription worked. It was a big moment. My experience of him and his team makes me wonder if IBM is doing the right thing, if that experience is common across IBM they are going to struggle to compete with firms like my own and even worse attract talent that has no interest in being bullied for decades before a promotion.
- ojbyrne 9y ago
  This doesn’t seem like a counterpoint, assuming he was an executive/decision-maker at IBM. i.e. if he was a “layoff-er” as opposed to a “layoff-ee.”
- hitekker 9y ago
  The article describes the rank-and-file employees being fired, not the middle-to-upper management behind the layoffs, a piece of which your company unfortunately hired.
  - varjag 9y ago
    Not saying it's different for engineers, but most of the examples in the article seem to be sales and marketing.
yuhong 9y ago
I dislike anti-discrimination laws for anything other than manual labor anyway. I think they are probably fundamentally flawed.
bitmapbrother 9y ago
It's kind of ironic that it's the old heads at the top, like Ginni Rometty, that are the very ones responsible for the position IBM is in.

443 points by mwexler 9y ago

" IBM has eliminated more than 20,000 American employees ages 40 and over, about 60 percent of its estimated total U.S. job cuts during those years" Combine this with the "new tech leaders"[1] affinity for hiring only young people and it's getting tough out there. Fortunately, non-technical fortune 500 companies seem still open to us grey hairs in their IT orgs. [1] Google, FB, Twitter, Uber, etc.

mipmap04 9y ago
The company I'm at has been hiring these ex-big blue individuals in droves and it's been awesome. Tons of talent combined with some truly remarkable experience.
- tyingq 9y ago
  That's reassuring. For a few months I was seriously considering dying my hair, solely for job purposes. Not something I'd ever do for pure vanity. It borders on ridiculous. Turned out I didn't need to, but the fact I had to consider it...
  - seibelj 9y ago
    I don't think it's that ridiculous. You buy a new suit to look professional, shave for a new date, why is dying your hair that crazy? We all do plenty of things for appearance purposes.
    - tyingq 9y ago
      I see your point, but shaving, clothes, etc, aren't altering the natural appearance of my body. It feels similar to a woman feeling some need for breast augmentation. Silly and superficial, and lots of work to please others for no reason.
      - ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
        Breast augmentation has been proven in studies to result in higher income over the long run. So maybe superficial, but definitely not silly.
        tyingq 9y ago
        Not arguing that it might "work". Dying my hair might have raised my salary too. But both are still silly to me. Similar, tall people make more money statistically. Real? Yes. But still silly.
        gaius_baltar 9y ago
        > Breast augmentation has been proven in studies to result in higher income over the long run. So maybe superficial, but definitely not silly. Did this study check for the obvious possibility of women of higher income being more inclined to pay for a breast augmentation? I'm sure any serious journal will require this before accepting such paper, but the amount of junk science being published in humanities journals forces me to ask.
    - 9889095r3jh 9y ago
      There's a big difference between wearing a suit and dying your gray hair. Dying your gray hair hides your age. Age is a protected class. It's illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of age. It's not illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of what suit you wear. Can we all agree that nobody should have to dye their hair to get a job? The fact that people on this site act like this is normal is very disturbing.
      - fencepost 9y ago
        I'm torn on the question of dye - not so much for my hair (where a braid to the middle of my back is more likely a concern than silver temples) but for my beard which has by now turned mostly white. I'm half wishing I'd grown it out and bleached the last few bits this past winter to start establishing as a part-time Santa. "No, it's white because I'm also a volunteer Santa during the season."
      - snowwrestler 9y ago
        Sadly, at least in the U.S. it is normal for many professional women to feel like they need to dye their hair. It is part of the general U.S. cultural bias toward youth in women, which is pretty obvious in popular media but also makes itself felt in the workforce. Grey hairs can start showing up as early as late 20s for some people. I work with a number of women over 35 and I'm having a hard time thinking of one with a single grey hair showing. For a few I'm friends with, I know that dyeing their hair feels like an important part of maintaining their professional appearance. Even Ginni Rommetty, CEO of IBM, probably dyes her hair. She has blonde hair without a strand of grey showing, which would be pretty extraordinary for someone who is 60.
        jessaustin 9y ago
        That's nothing compared to women who read the news, sports, etc. on TV, most of whom have to get breast implants. And yes, it is the older women with thicker torsos who have to do this to preserve their "feminine" appearance. Young women can often get by, just by being slim.
        9889095r3jh 9y ago
    - ema 9y ago
      I think the difference is that wearing a new suit and having a shaved face signals that one cares enough to make the effort to appear neat. Dying ones hear (with a natural color) however is a modification of one's appearance that one whishes to remain unnoticed. Not that I think looking neat is super important (my own appearance is just one step above "hobo") but it feels acceptable to me that some jobs require it because it correlates with other personality traits which are important like self-discipline and not being a "precious snowflake" for example.
      - gowld 9y ago
        It correlates with traits like being a dependent conformist, which is generally good for employees you want to exploit.
      - itronitron 9y ago
        if the dye job is noticeable then it just looks like the person is stuck in the past and will amplify the ageism. It should be easier for women to dye their hair well (so that it is not noticed as such) because a) women of all ages changes their hair color, b) they are willing to shell out the big bucks for a professional, and c) they are less likely to have graying facial hair :{>
  - depsin 9y ago
    I started my tech career at the age of 18 and my colleagues on their 30s and 40s. I rarely shave those days to create an appearance, I am mature enough to participate in serious tech discussions. Now I am nearing 40 and this story worry me. I may need to do the other way around to stay relevant.
- exikyut 9y ago
  At face value, your company could make some noises about how awesome things are and win some friends. YMMV in practice though. Maybe it could be established that these employees are encouraged to make small bits of noise in certain ways. (Translation: I'd like to hear more, even though I'm young myself FWIW)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- at-fates-hands 9y ago
  The group I work with at my current gig just hired two older devs to work with us. One guy came from Lockheed Martin, the other spent most of his career in finance at various banks and investment companies. Both have ungodly amounts of experience with .Net, Java and Javascript. Just being able to have them around has given our team an ocean of knowledge to draw from. I know I'm a better developer just from asking for help and bouncing stuff off of them. You can't put a price on stuff like this.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    That's exactly the value I was alluding to. Is paying these folks, say, 20% more than someone in their 30's really a boat anchor, or is it an asset?
    - volkl48 9y ago
      Realistically speaking, the answer to that question depends on the current makeup of your employees. If most of your workforce is 50+, you probably don't need more highly experienced people and are probably overpaying for some of the more basic tasks some are doing. It's also not great for continuity if you're set to have large segments of your workforce retiring in a small window of time. On the other hand, if your workforce skews young and inexperienced, bringing in some people with much more experience is probably going to be a valuable resource for them that'll help everyone perform better, and will help you avoid costly mistakes.
      - tyingq 9y ago
        That's a good observation. Managers should be maintaining a reasonable balance.
    - scholia 9y ago
      That's not what's happening. A decade ago, IBM had 130,00 staff in the USA and very few in India. Today, IBM has 130,00 staff in India and it refuses to say how many are left in the USA. It's not really a question of saving a bit of money (20%, say) on American employees. IBM is just shipping jobs to India at a terrific rate because the cost of employing Indians is, in comparison, very very low. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/ibm-shifts-center-of-gravity-half-a-world-away-to-india/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/ibm-shifts-center-of-g...
- Spoom 9y ago
  Same here, and our experience with them has thus far been great. Many times IBM doesn't know what they're giving up -- or they simply don't care.
  - HillaryBriss 9y ago
    Could it be that the leadership of IBM doesn't really know what's needed for the future? Could it be that, being clueless, these high level managers are merely guessing and assuming that young workers are the only ones who can lead to profit growth? Could it be that these high level managers fully expect these younger workers to lead and manage -- to do their jobs for them?
    - scholia 9y ago
      IBM is just getting rid of Americans with high salaries, health insurance and pensions and replacing them with much cheaper workers in India. It now has far more workers in India than it does in the USA. Of course, IBM is also destroying the skills and experience that customers are paying them to provide, but it's happy to get a short-term gain and ignore the long-term pain. The people in charge will have stashed away their millions and left before most of the ordure hits the rotating device. Bear in mind that IBM's turnover today is less than it was in 2000, and it's had five or six years of annual decline. As a company, it's failing badly, so perhaps it's unrealistic for it plan for a future that might not happen.
      - chid 9y ago
        I'd argue in IBM's eyes it's short-term pain (increased training costs/doubling up on resources/lawsuits, communication/teething issues) with the view for long term gain (lower long term costs / liabilities). That's not to say I agree or disagree with the approach but it's definitely not an easy decision to make.
RandallBrown 9y ago
What percentage of IBM employees were age 40 and over? It's not really age discrimination if these cuts are applying equally to everyone.

buro9 9y ago

The important bit: How did IBM get around the legal requirement for the disclosures? With a move that even critics acknowledge is ingenious. The company’s pre-2014 layoff documents required employees receiving severance to waive all bias claims based on “race, national origin, ancestry, color, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, pregnancy, marital status, age... disability, medical condition, or veteran status.” The new documents deleted “age” from the waiver list. In fact, they specifically said employees were not waiving their right when it came to age and could pursue age discrimination cases against the company. But, the new documents added, employees had to waive the right to take their age cases to court. Instead, they had to pursue them through private arbitration. What’s more, they had to keep them confidential and pursue them alone. They couldn’t join with other workers to make a case. Forced arbitration continues to be an awful thing that companies foist on employees to strip them of their rights.

gcb0 9y ago
wow! I had no idea forced arbitration could trump labour laws. ...oh wait, US has none of that.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  The irony being that it was one of the countries once upon a time known for actually having them (starting in 1886).
venuur 9y ago
FYI, your quote renders as a fixed-width font code block and does not word wrap on mobile. It makes the text very hard to read. For mobile user’s benefit, a different quotation method would be better.
- notyourwork 9y ago
  I agree but this is how a quoted block is rendered on this site. Its fine for desktop but almost completely unusable on a mobile phone since you have to scroll horizontally to read each line.

mistermann 9y ago

On one hand, while harsh, laying off older workers (even the ones who have kept up to date on technology) makes good economic sense. On the other hand, not all global companies are limited by the type of worker's rights legislation noted in the article. While this survival of the fittest, hyper-capitalism approach will optimize return on investment and technological innovation, I suspect it is also ~destroying the careers of many high achievers who would likely have outperformed in other fields without having their careers derailed. Does anyone see a way to reconcile this?

tyingq 9y ago
"laying off older workers...makes good economic sense" Perhaps you're just quoting bad, but real, existing policy, but this is pure bullshit. Experience has value. I'm surprised also, that younger developers aren't concerned about this. Do they think they are going to retire in their 30's, or that they are somehow more innovative or more smart than those that preceded them?
- TACIXAT 9y ago
  >Do they think they are going to retire in their 30's That is the plan, yes.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Heh, appreciate the honesty. I guess there is a temporary market condition where that might seem realistic to some.
  - 52-6F-62 9y ago
    Ah, shame. 30's here. Hint: no retiring yet. In fact, not sure why you'd want to, but for escaping the daily grind for someone else. The well is endless. Drink deep. Also not sure why its worth selling some of the best, most energetic years of one's life to something one cares so little about that one wants to enter into it on an escape trajectory.
    - 9y ago

rb808 9y ago

I dont know about this. Its clear that IBM's products aren't as good as Amazon/Google, is this because their workforce? I can see AWS & Google has much younger devs who are fluent in more modern systems. I really have to retire before 50 because it doesn't look good.

Cthulhu_ 9y ago
> I really have to retire before 50 because it doesn't look good. I'll make a killing as an old fashioned java developer at that age, probably.
- kls 9y ago
  COBOL developers did just fine, you may not get to work in the new hot tech but there is a huge market for aging entrenched technologies. You average Java developer is late 30's to 40's and it's not uncommon to see whole teams of 40 something developers in a java shop. There is life outside the valley.
  - le-mark 9y ago
    Can confirm, I'm in such a team now.
  - twunde 9y ago
    I'll mention that COBOL devs are no longer doing just fine. I had an ex-coworker that had trouble finding well-paying COBOL jobs. A lot of it has been offshored or outsourced to low-paid consulting companies like Tata and the like.
    - le-mark 9y ago
      I have anecdotal evidence of this as well. A local company that formerly employed thousands of cobol devs has had aggressive layoffs and offshoring over the past 10 years. Lots and lots of unemployed cobol devs here.
    - praneshp 9y ago

oldslowcorp 9y ago

Could it be a case of correlation vs causation? Age discrimination is bad. Firing employees because of their age, or maybe more cynically, because if their elevated salaries, is a shit thing to do. But what about getting rid of the employees who hold the company back? The ones who drag their feet. The ones who are more concerned about protecting their political standing than accomplishing good work. The ones who try to avoid change, sometimes literally defended by "Well that's the way we've always done it." That breed of employee tends to have been at the company for a long time. Often that means they're older in age, too. Making a clean sweep of folks like that could appear to be age discrimination while actually being due to performance.

youdontknowtho 9y ago
That's why I support a more robust welfare state. The reason that people are in positions like you describe is because of the dire consequences of losing employment. Being older doesn't mean that you don't know how to innovate or look for ways to improve the area you work in. People become super cautious because of the mortgage and college debt, car payments, on and on and on. Their "actual job" is to get money for those things. If losing employment didn't mean complete loss of livelihood, the only people working at a place would be there because they actually wanted to be there. They would be interested in performance because it might be rewarded, not because failing would be punished.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
  I think that’s a good point. The chilling effects of ruin without a safety net make it hard for cteative individuals to develop their skills - and their economic potential.
cableshaft 9y ago
These people don't have to be very old at all, actually. I've seen plenty of young people start acting like this at a company after working there only a year or two. That being said, if it is an older person doing this, then it can be difficult to let them go without it appearing to be due to age discrimination. But I've seen enough layoffs to know that for a lot of companies, it's all about saving money by getting rid of these people, not about their performance, at least every time I've seen it happen. I've even been told directly in a layoff it was because I was one of the higher paid people in the company (it was a game studio, so I still wasn't being paid all that much). I guess I was old for someone in the game industry, since most people start fresh out of school and burn out of the industry in less than five years. My manager got laid off as well, who was in his 60s, did excellent at his job, and had tons of amazing experience (I wish I worked on even just one of the cool games he was lead on), but it was definitely because he was one of the highest paid people there (if not the highest), not because of anything else.

TomMasz 9y ago

I just participated in a "Voluntary Reduction In Force" at (company I can't mention for legal reasons). It was applied across all of R&D but only people with 15 years or more of service were allowed to apply. We're being paid a week of salary and healthcare for each year worked so it's not too bad. But even so it was abundantly clear who they were targeting.

maxxxxx 9y ago
One week of salary per year served is actually pretty bad. That money is gone quickly. In my company it used to be 4 weeks per year. Now it's two.
- cableshaft 9y ago
  Wow 4 weeks? I didn't know there was companies like that out there, especially now. Our company reduced it to 1 week per year (claimed it was the 'standard', and it would save them money so they could spend it on being so innovative elsewhere), then reduced 401k matching from them paying once per quarter to you have to be employed on December 31 of that year or they don't have to match for the entire year (crazy, I know), and then after they got those two things in place started axing tens of thousands of people's jobs, and saved tons of money in the process, I'm sure. These policy changes also lead to people voluntarily resigning and thus giving them lower layoff numbers too. I'm probably not sticking around much longer myself, but I had a few too many life changes (like buying a house) that kept me from leaving earlier.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    I am sure the top guys in your company took a significant amount of the savings as bonus.
  - CommandStrip 9y ago
    When Microsoft did the test layoffs in 2014, I believe they included one month of salary per year of service.
  - 9y ago

graycat 9y ago

IBM has one main problem: They are a sick culture. One consequence is that they are a sick company. Their sickness causes them to do self-destructive things which makes them an even sicker company. Here are some parts of the sick IBM culture: (1) Marketing. "You might think that IBM is a technology company or a computer company, but you would be wrong. IBM is a marketing company: They look for opportunities to sell. They might get into grocery stores tomorrow if they thought that there was money to be made there." -- IIRC from a manager of a large IBM branch office. Same guy, IIRC: "You might think that IBM research comes up with powerful new technology. IBM development turns this technology into good, new products. Then IBM marketing sells these products and makes money. That's exactly backwards: Instead, IBM marketing comes up with what new products can be sold at a profit. IBM development builds these products and gets them ready for the market. If development has trouble, they may go to IBM research for solutions. What IBM charges for the products has nothing to do with what IBM's costs are: Instead, IBM sells the products for what the customers are willing to pay." Consequences: (A) IBM respects people who do well managing marketing efforts. (B) IBM does not much respect technical people or people not in management. (C) The decision makers in IBM are marketing people who are not very technical. So, these people are slow to see the market and marketing potential of new technology. (D) Long IBM's approach to what to sell was that their main customers, large banks, insurance companies, manufacturing companies, would grab their IBM marketing representatives and scream about problems they had. With enough screaming with clearly enough market potential, finally IBM would develop and sell a solution. (2) IBM Management In this way, part of the IBM culture was the primacy of the middle and upper managers. High stability was valued. Innovation was not. The higher managers had staffs to thoroughly study each decision. Then the manager had plenty of cover for the decisions they did make. IIRC, an early remark of IBM CEO Lou Gerstner was that "IBM is the most arrogant, inwardly directed, process oriented company I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of companies.". (3) Stuck with Mainframes So, these attitudes caused IBM to miss out on essentially everything past 3270 terminals connected to CICS (customer information control system -- for building and running interactive applications, e.g., for order entry) on an IBM 370 family mainframe. So, sure, can see this situation as a case of "The Innovator's Dilemma". I.e., IBM was slow to get into lines of business that would compete, under sell, undercut, beat IBM's mainframe, cash cow business. (4) IBM Missed out Long a standard attitude in IBM was that IBM needed only high margin businesses and should not try to compete in low margin businesses. So, with this thinking, IBM passed on the businesses of Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Google, Qualcomm, Apple, etc. So, IBM missed out on the growth of TCP/IP, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, the Internet, Web browsers, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, etc. With high irony, IBM long made the crucial, core chips used in the high end routers of Cisco and Juniper. Why? IBM had a microelectronics division, and they saw those chips as a business opportunity. But IBM did not pick up that ball and run with it to compete against Cisco or Juniper in high end routers. Due to J. Cocke and his 801 computer, IBM Research was early in RISC. There was some usage of RISC in some IBM mainframe I/O subsystems and in IBM's AIX workstation lines, but RISC became a big thing (e.g., the current Hennessy, Patterson Turing award that claims that now 99% of processors are RISC) but apparently not for IBM. IBM was ahead in magnetic recording with giant magneto resistance disk heads, but Western Digital, etc. were successful with disks but not IBM. IBM had high end research on architecture, algorithms, and software for high end disk clusters, but, IIRC, EMC made the big bucks there, not IBM. IBM Research was early into "wearable" computers, but Apple got rich with the iPhone, etc., not IBM. At one time, IBM actually ran all of the Internet, but they never saw the opportunity there until too late. IBM had an early Web browser but let others get big leverage in the browser wars. At one time, IBM had the TCP/IP stack in chip hardware, but they failed to make big bucks with that. At one time, maybe still, much of the backbone of the Internet needs an IBM-invented amplifier that amplifies the optical signals on the optical fibers without converting back to digital; that was great leverage over the backbone of the Internet, but IBM didn't take that opportunity. The chip manufacturers are only just now moving to extreme UV for their light sources, but parts of IBM saw the point back in the 1980s or so and built a cyclotron as an X-ray source for a microelectronics lithography light source. Today there are lots of chip companies -- Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, etc. -- and several high end chip foundries but apparently IBM is not a major player there. IBM was early into social computing, with Prodigy, etc., but AOL and later Facebook did well. Prodigy was also with Sears and for on-line selling, but Amazon made the big bucks there. IBM was early into really good work in virtual machines, e.g., the 360/67 of 1967 and its CP/67 virtual machine software. But VMware made the big bucks with virtual machines. IBM was a leader in relational database, with System R and DB/2 and the software on the System/38, etc., but Oracle, SQL Server, etc. are the database success stories now. IBM had object oriented software in firmware in 1970 or so, but apparently IBM never became a leader in object oriented computing. PCs? IBM was essentially the leader, but Microsoft and Intel made the big bucks from PCs, not IBM. Cloud computing? I've heard of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google but much less about IBM. Laser printers? Same song, next verse. (5) Defeat from Jaws of Victory It goes on this way: In plain terms, from 1980 to 1990, IBM was essentially the technology leader in essentially everything in computing, but the IBM top managers never saw how to make money with that technology. So, 1990 computer and Internet technology, the open door for likely the biggest step up in technology, economic productivity, and more in all of human history, and IBM was determined to ignore it. It appears that generally IBM is a massive case of organizational behavior goal subordination: The middle and upper managers want to crush anything new; they are not successful in this effort outside IBM but quite successful inside IBM. For many years, the IBM division managers would meet at the Armonk HQ, give their financial results, nicely ahead of projections, and project even better results for the next year. But near 1990, somehow the results were commonly less good than the projections. The consensus was that "God had ceased to smile on IBM". (6) For Individuals For a worker in the US economy, for a good job, income, and financial security, it is their responsibility to get that done. A very common approach is to start and run a successful business. An electrician who has a truck and an assistant and who stays busy can do better financially than 80% of the US IBM employees. Same for a guy who has several crews mowing grass and plowing snow; same for a guy doing well running several McDonald's, Burger Kings, or Wendy's. Same for a dentist. A K-12 school teacher or a nurse has a more stable career than nearly anyone in IBM. (7) Firing People IBM fires lots of people because IBM management doesn't know how to organize work for those people in ways that make money. IBM likes to fire older people so that they can blame the failures on the older people being "behind" in technology. Also the managers don't like the older, technical people as subordinates because the older people know too much and can challenge the manager. In particular, the managers don't like technical people and don't want any technical people who know more about technology than the managers. Since the managers with respect are marketing people with poor technical qualifications, those marketing managers like to fire to older experts in technology. It's dysfunctional organizational behavior goal subordination, arrogant, inwardly directed, process oriented, etc. (8) Future of IBM The solution? Sure, Darwin is on the case: Slowly IBM will shrink and disappear. Maybe near the end, Bill Gates will buy all of it and put what is left of it in a museum.

pjdemers 9y ago

Pay off your mortgage. When you get pushed out of the workforce because of age (and you will), having no rent and no mortgage puts the situation in a different perspective. It becomes more of a beginning than an end.

adstr123 9y ago
Simple as that!
mushbino 9y ago
Paid it off just now. Thanks for the advice!
pcwalton 9y ago
This is terrible advice even for the tiny fraction of people who can actually follow it.
- thetrumanshow 9y ago
  Can you elaborate on your reasoning?
  - pcwalton 9y ago
    Tax advantages, and the fact that you shouldn't put your entire net worth into a single illiquid asset.
    - telchar 9y ago
      What tax advantages? I'm going to get exactly zero benefit this year for all the mortgage interest I've paid; I'm probably going to take the newly increased standard deduction whereas last year I saved thousands by itemizing.
      - pcwalton 9y ago
        In my comment above, "tax advantages" is short for "tax advantages that may or may not apply depending on your individual financial situation, but should be carefully considered before making a huge financial decision like paying off a mortgage".

arcanearts 9y ago

This is nothing new for them. My father started at IBM in 1968, and was forced into "voluntary" early retirement in 1993. He at least got to keep his pension, but if he hadn't gone voluntarily and opted to stick it out like some of his colleagues, he would have been let go in the following months and lost everything.

speby 9y ago
How would he have lost everything? The pension would stay no matter what.
- drdeadringer 9y ago
  > The pension would stay no matter what. I have a doubt, because "business in America".
- arcanearts 9y ago
  The way he explained it to me was if he took the early retirement he would receive the pension, if he had stayed and gotten laid off he would not have gotten the pension.
maxxxxx 9y ago
Back then people at least got some good severance and a pension. The current generation will be forced out with nothing if they haven't saved up a huge amount of money.
- raesene9 9y ago
  I'd echo this, the old IBM redundancies weren't necessarily bad for the recipients. My uncle got made redundant by IBM in the 90's having spent his whole career there from university. He got a pretty good severance package and pension, which he's now been able to draw for 25+ years...

shineymetal 9y ago

This is exactly why I would never consider a full time job here. I was an intern and watched my entire team get laid off regardless of performance. Older workers were most definitely targeted.

draw_down 9y ago

We all know how it works in our industry. I do find it bitterly ironic that all our diversity efforts (which I otherwise fully support) rarely or never even touch on this issue. The one form of discrimination everyone will face unless they die or leave tech. But, you know, labor costs.

justin66 9y ago

If you're old enough to remember IBM being a real tech (evil) empire, the striking thing is how much the swapping out of old career employees with young people and contractors has correlated with IBM floundering and the cool parts of the company being gradually replaced with services and... more services.

Paperweight 9y ago
"""Services as a Service" as a Service" as a Service" (TM)

ScottAS 9y ago

IBM is an embarrassing company. They are not culling based on age, they are culling based on severe lack of skills and dated values. IBM is saturated with tech people who threw in their technical chops 20 years ago to become a salesperson. Everything they do, from their blockchain efforts to Watson, is so embarrassingly driven by oldschool sales/marketing people that they can't be taken seriously by technical decision makers at their customer companies. They no longer have the ability to lead their customers in technical decisions.

fishbone 9y ago
Does anyone else think that the IBM commercial where they talk about tracking a tomato with a blockchain is laughable? Or is it just me?
- ScottAS 9y ago
  It's complete crap. The saddest part is that they do have some amazing technical minds behind the scenes. They give their stage to sleazy marketing and salespeople who have no idea what they're talking about way too often.
  - hfdgiutdryg 9y ago
    Sounds an awful lot like Microsoft.
    - rsuelzer 9y ago
      I think Microsoft has turned the corner.
      - gaius 9y ago
        Yes - Azure is genuinely good
- brandonmenc 9y ago
  One of the few companies [0] in the space that I find interesting is doing exactly that. Tracking the authenticity or safety of physical products changing many hands is a perfect application of distributed, tamper-proof databases. [0] https://www.provenance.org https://www.provenance.org

ScottAS 9y ago

FlyingSideKick 9y ago

I wonder if Amazon, Facebook and Google are using similar performance management tactics to drive the attrition of older workers? “A slide from a similar presentation prepared last spring for the same leaders called for “re-profiling current talent” to “create room for new talent.” Presentations for 2015 and 2016 for the 50,000-employee software group also included plans for “aggressive performance management” and emphasized the need to “maintain steady attrition to offset hiring.””

jorblumesea 9y ago

Completely anecdotal, but I've interviewed a few IBM lifers and veterans for positions outside IBM. Their skills were lacking, to say the least. It's unclear why. Perhaps when you joined IBM "back in the day" a CS degree was less important? Or maybe the business itself stressed other skills over technical proficiency? While ageism is a serious problem in the industry, I also don't think it's fair to equate seniority with competence. There are many wizard old heads, but not every old head is a wizard.

mancerayder 9y ago
A CS degree, you say? What in the world use is that other than jumpstarting the first couple of years of employment? And getting filtered past people who believe it is important? Maybe I'm wrong, but I've always seen some of these older companies as being big on hiring people from academia (and also military for some reason - it seems many of these folks have military backgrounds).
- jorblumesea 9y ago
  Joining the industry in the 90s wasn't anything like joining it now, at least for entry level positions. Just saying, the industry was different back then and knowing fundamentals seemed less important than slinging code.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  > A CS degree, you say? What in the world use is that Perhaps you can learn something.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

seymour333 9y ago

And they probably saved millions in wages while they were at it. Coming out of college as a mature student I saw so many of my younger classmates absolutely throwing themselves at the worst offers the local job pool presented. I kept telling them just don't accept, wait for a better offer, look elsewhere. The problem is, at least in the market I'm in, there seems to be a practice of wage fixing. It's the same bad offer everywhere. I talked to a few recruiters at those companies, asked some pointed questions about compensation that more experienced employees tend to ask, and watched them just shut down. It was less about the "millennial advantage" and more about the benefits of naivety on their bottom line. I get that having more work/life experience in general qualifies me for a slightly higher starting wage, but I held out and refused any offers from low ball employers and started $10k higher than most of my colleagues who graduated at the same time. It's horrible that this older demographic is being discriminated against and forced out of their jobs, but this isn't only about age discrimination. The goal isn't to acquire "digitally native" employees (not entirely). The goal is to save money on wages and lower the wage expectations of an entire generation of people. ...unless I'm wrong and everyone who replaced someone who was forced out is doing great and all those boomers were just becoming stagnant dead weight and deserved what they got.

politips 9y ago
boomers? The baby boom generation was born between the mid-1940s and 1960s. They're all in their late 60s and 70s now and most have long retired. The age-out demography we are talking about now generally are their children currently in their early-40s to early 50s. The dial-up generation.
- seymour333 9y ago
  fair enough, don't know why I lump all the "olds" together like that. There has to be a better name for them than the dial-up generation. I grew up with dial-up and I'm not that old.
  - mixmastamyk 9y ago
    Gen X, while I'm not fond of it, is usually the term here. Grew up with Commodore 64, saw the birth of the web and built it up, now considered too expensive, etc.

smoll 9y ago

I'm not sure this is just IBM lacking the vision to see their older employees for the value that they truly hold, rather, they're just following the path of least resistance. I see this same sort of scenario playing out in other companies across the globe too; why should any company be innovative enough to value and empower older workers when they can just exploit young, naive talent? How do we prevent this exact same vicious cycle from playing out all over again in 25-30 years when Millennials are the grey-haired ones with an inability to "innovate" or "connect" with the younger generation? If anything, with the rapid pace of technology only accelerating over time, future generations will become irrelevant "old heads" on an even shorter timeline.

AstralStorm 9y ago
Either that or the cycle stops due to being unsustainable. So instead of gray heads it will be most paid workers. Usually most paid for a reason that's correlated with achievement or experience.

lasermike026 9y ago

This speaks to me. https://youtu.be/yL7X3DTyS2Q https://youtu.be/yL7X3DTyS2Q

mankash666 9y ago

Among professional jobs, software is the only one where you go out of demand as you age. Doctors, lawyers, civil engineers, architects routinely peak in their 50s, but in tech if you haven't transitioned into management by 40, you're not valued anymore. How did this even come to be?

mixmastamyk 9y ago
Seems to coincide with when 28 year-olds with beards took over every tech company, haha. Cheaper no doubt, and that is more important to most companies, more than quality. They first tried outsourcing to the other side of the world, but found too many timezones grinds productivity to a halt and so plan B, younger and cheaper became an explicit goal. Not just a tech thing either, focus on appearance is bordering on the extreme nowadays. Watched the "Willy Wonka…" movie from the early 70's with my daughter last night and was struck that most of the newscasters were silver haired and in their 60s, reminding me of Jerry Dunphy. Several of the stars had messy hair that needed combing, not necessarily in character. Many things were higher quality back when they let experienced folks work, and "allowed ugly people to make music," as it were.
rankam 9y ago
Software developers aren't considered in the same league as doctors, lawyers, civil engineers, or architects. Software developers are viewed as construction workers by most people and businesses.
- acdha 9y ago
  This is going to upset a lot of developers who expect the boom to last forever. A ton of people think they’re on the same side as senior management because they get paid better than average and have been able to get better working conditions; very few people in management share this view. The brilliant thing was getting so many to buy into libertarian propaganda and actively fight against things like unionization or labor laws which would reduce the power imbalance.
dalfonso 9y ago
Outside of some of the mentioned reasons (20-somethings are cheaper, ageism, etc.), I think there's a lot of emphasis on staying up-to-date. In order to be "desirable" you need to consistently be learning about new technologies, languages, frameworks, etc. ON YOUR OWN TIME. As you get into age 30+, many people are married, have kids, have enough money to travel, etc. thus you probably aren't going to be as interested in reading programming blogs and watching tutorials.

qserpent 9y ago

If it's all about the money, companies should offer voluntary pay cuts. I know a few folks who'd take that over "voluntary" retirement any day.

TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
It’s harder to hide the age bias if you cut pay.
- jjnoakes 9y ago
  This only matters if it isn't about the money...

scarface74 9y ago

The dislocation caused by IBM’s cuts has been especially great because until recently the company encouraged its employees to think of themselves as “IBMers” and many operated under the assumption that they had career-long employment. I tell everyone -- don't drink the Kool-Aid. Never believe that a company has any loyalty and always keep an eye on the market. Even if you are paid well now and see that your job isn't gaining you marketable skills -- leave. At the end of the day, as a person in technology, your major resources are your technical skills. I will leave a company in a heartbeat if I see that the company's technical direction isn't in line with what the market wants. I'm in my 40s and biggest fear is being unemployable -- not being unemployed. I haven't had to do it yet, but hopefully, I would have the discipline to leave a job where I'm overpaid with respect to the market to take a job that pays a little less that keeps me competitive.

archagon 9y ago
I was surprised when I visited the Computer History Museum recently and discovered that IBM actually had its own rally song: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L9oh3gqOEKU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L9oh3gqOEKU
- drdeadringer 9y ago
  I was surprised to visit the Computer History Museum and see VAX computers I had to work with on my first job right out of college... in 2005, for a defence firm. 1MB of RAM was a square foot of circuit board. I had a lot of questions about my future.
  - chasil 9y ago
    Our plant still runs mission critical VAX VMS TDMS applications. We junked our VAX 7000s about a decade ago and moved to the Charon emulator. Played with VAX VMS on Simh, but everyone was too scared to put any real data on it.
- raesene9 9y ago
  heck they had a whole song book full of them https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/music/pdf/SB1.pdf https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/music/pdf/SB1.pd...

1290cc 9y ago

I'll offer a counter point to this, we hired a senior SVP from IBM about 2 years ago (he spent his entire career at IBM). IBM also tried to sue him when he left. My company is a "born in the cloud" company so we have values and an attitude that I would consider in alignment with modern, inclusive, customer positive values, etc. He passed interviews and all the numbers showed he was a high performer etc. We brought him on hoping he would use his experience to grow our cloud business into "the enterprise". What we found was we had hired a guy that scoffed at ideas like UX, frequently bullied his team and the extended team in calls. Would often go off on monologues and was extremely rigid in his top down approach to management. It was a complete culture shock to the team and customers. We understood that some of these things were part of the deal but what we didnt expect was a near zero openness to ideas. He had classic double speak of stating his door was always open to differing opinions or ideas but a week later he would be telling the company on conference calls that if people didn't like it there was the door. He brought in his entire exec team from IBM and things continued to go down hill from there. Some of his own team would make fun of our sales leaders until one of them called these guys out and discovered they had little to no understanding of how cloud pricing and subscription worked. It was a big moment. My experience of him and his team makes me wonder if IBM is doing the right thing, if that experience is common across IBM they are going to struggle to compete with firms like my own and even worse attract talent that has no interest in being bullied for decades before a promotion.

ojbyrne 9y ago
This doesn’t seem like a counterpoint, assuming he was an executive/decision-maker at IBM. i.e. if he was a “layoff-er” as opposed to a “layoff-ee.”
hitekker 9y ago
The article describes the rank-and-file employees being fired, not the middle-to-upper management behind the layoffs, a piece of which your company unfortunately hired.
- varjag 9y ago
  Not saying it's different for engineers, but most of the examples in the article seem to be sales and marketing.

yuhong 9y ago

I dislike anti-discrimination laws for anything other than manual labor anyway. I think they are probably fundamentally flawed.

bitmapbrother 9y ago

It's kind of ironic that it's the old heads at the top, like Ginni Rometty, that are the very ones responsible for the position IBM is in.