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> how can anyone who has stayed at IBM for 30 years be anything other than a deadweight who is just there to collect a paycheck? This is blatantly absurd. What

> how can anyone who has stayed at IBM for 30 years be anything other than a deadweight who is just there to collect a paycheck? This is blatantly absurd. What makes you think that? According to the story, in general, older employees received good reviews but were discriminated against by a point system that gave an edge to new, young employees.

kazinator 9y ago
I watched the whole thing and saw the scatter plot clearly. Though the points are negatively correlated with age, there isn't enough information to know whether that was unfair. Raw data like this cannot tell you that. For instance, say that 75% of the employees in some company are male. That by itself doesn't prove that there is a hiring bias against women. What does "good reviews" mean? Maybe the people getting the points have "great reviews".
- maltalex 9y ago
  > there isn't enough information to know whether that was unfair How do you get from "we don't know if the reviews were fair" to "everyone who's worked for IBM for 30 years has to be a deadweight"?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
alexryan 9y ago
> According to the story, in general, older employees received good reviews but were discriminated against by a point system that gave an edge to new, young employees. So what? Why would you choose to continue working for a company where you were discriminated against? If you have been working hard to continue growing your skills all this time, you will have no problem finding a better job at a less corrupt company.
- kazinator 9y ago
  I can't agree with that; discrimination is a problem if it is real. That's like saying "Oh well, why would you want to go into a restaurant where the sign says 'no blacks', anyway" and not do anything about it.
sitepodmatt 9y ago
Experience maybe. Longest IBMer I know did a ~10year stint across the world (IBM run many banks' IT, in part or in whole), it was cushy job apparently - 4x than he makes today doing a similar role, people wanted to hold on to those jobs as long as possible, he would sure be envious of someone holding it down for 30 years, juicy $s. I spoke an even older IBMer recently too, he talked of days of 1st class flights, 3 figure relocation packages, the parties etc.. again those days didn't last for decades, but if he did I'd guess he'd be hitting the ~35 year mark at IBM. Sure seems to me people rode that gravy train hard, unsurprising their shaking out some of it now especially if these long timers expect similar perks to the old days, probably similar to flight attendants on BA - the new generation are on 0hr contracts whilst the old generation had/maintain the most cushy number in flight attending - its easy to see why a CEO/CFO would favor new gen.

kazinator 9y ago

I watched the whole thing and saw the scatter plot clearly. Though the points are negatively correlated with age, there isn't enough information to know whether that was unfair. Raw data like this cannot tell you that. For instance, say that 75% of the employees in some company are male. That by itself doesn't prove that there is a hiring bias against women. What does "good reviews" mean? Maybe the people getting the points have "great reviews".

maltalex 9y ago
> there isn't enough information to know whether that was unfair How do you get from "we don't know if the reviews were fair" to "everyone who's worked for IBM for 30 years has to be a deadweight"?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

alexryan 9y ago

> According to the story, in general, older employees received good reviews but were discriminated against by a point system that gave an edge to new, young employees. So what? Why would you choose to continue working for a company where you were discriminated against? If you have been working hard to continue growing your skills all this time, you will have no problem finding a better job at a less corrupt company.

kazinator 9y ago
I can't agree with that; discrimination is a problem if it is real. That's like saying "Oh well, why would you want to go into a restaurant where the sign says 'no blacks', anyway" and not do anything about it.

sitepodmatt 9y ago

Experience maybe. Longest IBMer I know did a ~10year stint across the world (IBM run many banks' IT, in part or in whole), it was cushy job apparently - 4x than he makes today doing a similar role, people wanted to hold on to those jobs as long as possible, he would sure be envious of someone holding it down for 30 years, juicy $s. I spoke an even older IBMer recently too, he talked of days of 1st class flights, 3 figure relocation packages, the parties etc.. again those days didn't last for decades, but if he did I'd guess he'd be hitting the ~35 year mark at IBM. Sure seems to me people rode that gravy train hard, unsurprising their shaking out some of it now especially if these long timers expect similar perks to the old days, probably similar to flight attendants on BA - the new generation are on 0hr contracts whilst the old generation had/maintain the most cushy number in flight attending - its easy to see why a CEO/CFO would favor new gen.