7 ms·

> older workers tend to be better paid So, if the metric is "remove employees that cost the most but don't seem to justify the cost," it's going to look like a

> older workers tend to be better paid So, if the metric is "remove employees that cost the most but don't seem to justify the cost," it's going to look like age discrimination, even if it wasn't. I don't know whether Intel did this or not, but the point is that you can't assume the intent by the result alone.

300bps 8y ago
I don't know whether Intel did this or not, but the point is that you can't assume the intent by the result alone Would you feel differently if the case were about race instead of age? For example, if Intel laid off a population of people that was 22% African American while the population of the people remaining in the company was 10% African American, would you feel the same way?
- rdl 8y ago
  Isn’t the argument that women and racial minorities are “paid less for the same work”? In which case laying off white and asian men would presumably be the economically efficient choice? (I definitely think such a gap has existed at various times and places. There was a UK enterprise software firm founded by a women which hired mainly stay at home mothers and did amazingly well.)
  - frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
    No it seems to me he's making a totally different argument which no one here is actually addressing. Why should we care about intention? The purpose of a system is what it does[0] so if Intel's 'hiring and firing' system systematically removes older people who cares about The Reason that managers give? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
- andreareina 8y ago
  We have a societally-accepted reason for older people to earn more -- experience, responsibility, and time-in-grade are correlated both age and pay. The same cannot be said for race or sex.
  - rdl 8y ago
    If the job is something with such a steep learning curve and plateau (maybe due to periodic technical revolutions?) that someone with 20 years experience is only insignificantly better than someone with 5 years experience, economics would support paying them the same. If we want to artificially subsidize some more expensive older workers, they should be subsidized directly by society, not by forcing employers to do so. (There are a lot of jobs where 20 years gives better performance, or where being 51% good va 50% good would be worth a huge premium, but not all.) Where this really gets complex is startups which are growing in headcount and shrinking in equity offer size. An early hire there might be objectively worse than a new marginal hire but has an equity vesting package which makes him vastly better paid for each month today. IIRC it was Zynga which tried to forcibly renegotiate this (instead of just firing people who were presently underperforming, the usual route).
    - sgift 8y ago
      > If the job is something with such a steep learning curve and plateau (maybe due to periodic technical revolutions?) that someone with 20 years experience is only insignificantly better than someone with 5 years experience, economics would support paying them the same. Good news then that this isn't how tech jobs work, where about 99% of all "technical revolutions" are just renaming old things which had fallen out of fashion and use them again.
      - rbanffy 8y ago
        > about 99% of all "technical revolutions" are just renaming old things which had fallen out of fashion and use them again Remember how thrilled web developers were when they discovered MVC the last couple times?
    - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
      Fine but then don't create housing bubbles that lock lower paid younger workers out of the market. I have to relocate in the not too distant future because local rent and home prices eclipse my frozen salary.
- 0xTJ 8y ago
  You're completely ignoring the justification given, and it's a lot more difficult to translate the full situation to your analogy.
danieltillett 8y ago
Unless the bosses at Intel just hate older people (unlikely as they are almost all older people) they are doing this for economic reasons alone. I say this as someone already over-the-hill age wise that we really need to find a way to allow people as they age to be able to accept a lower wage that matches their productivity. Far fewer old people would be made redundant if they got a wage cut every year instead of a raise.
- humanrebar 8y ago
  First, productivity (as in widgets per hour) is a bad measure for knowledge worker value. It's famously hard to measure the output of teams of engineers over long periods of time, let alone the recent output of a single engineer. Second, it is just taken as a given here that knowledge workers become less productive over time. Why are engineers downhill starting in middle age but not doctors, lawyers, professors, and professional coaches? Third, it's also taken as a given that we can fairly cut the wages of individuals based on... what? Again, we're bad at measuring performance. Are we assuming they're less productive because they're older? How is that OK? It's possible that a 50 year old has become better at relevant things in the last year, surely.
  - roenxi 8y ago
    > Second, it is just taken as a given here that knowledge workers become less productive over time. Why are engineers downhill starting in middle age but not doctors, lawyers, professors, and professional coaches? Software engineers in particular. Computers really started to stabilise in the 2003 when single core clock speeds hit a wall. 'Rapid' change since then looks a bit glacial compared to what rapid meant in the 90s. I don't have anything to back it up, but I'm pretty suspicious that a lot of specific techniques that were important in the 90s are no longer important. I know lawyers were in existence in ~500BC and the law famously changes slowly. Doctors, coaches, etc are in a similar boat where the situation now is basically the same as when they were 10 years old. No such similarities in software, the languages, bottlenecks, opportunities and best-practice mindset (in many areas) has changed. It makes sense why software engineers under the age of 30 would have an edge. If hardware continues to plateau (moderate if, given graphics cards) then the current generation will not have the same problem when they are 50. ASIDE: I always wonder if it is really a coincidence that Apple started making inroads at the exact second that being able to quickly incorporate new parts stopped being an exponential advantage.
humanrebar 8y ago
> ...you can't assume the intent by the result alone The "disparate impact theory" in legal reasoning says the opposite, more or less: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact
OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago
That's what a class action is for. They will determine that.

300bps 8y ago

I don't know whether Intel did this or not, but the point is that you can't assume the intent by the result alone Would you feel differently if the case were about race instead of age? For example, if Intel laid off a population of people that was 22% African American while the population of the people remaining in the company was 10% African American, would you feel the same way?

rdl 8y ago
Isn’t the argument that women and racial minorities are “paid less for the same work”? In which case laying off white and asian men would presumably be the economically efficient choice? (I definitely think such a gap has existed at various times and places. There was a UK enterprise software firm founded by a women which hired mainly stay at home mothers and did amazingly well.)
- frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
  No it seems to me he's making a totally different argument which no one here is actually addressing. Why should we care about intention? The purpose of a system is what it does[0] so if Intel's 'hiring and firing' system systematically removes older people who cares about The Reason that managers give? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
andreareina 8y ago
We have a societally-accepted reason for older people to earn more -- experience, responsibility, and time-in-grade are correlated both age and pay. The same cannot be said for race or sex.
- rdl 8y ago
  If the job is something with such a steep learning curve and plateau (maybe due to periodic technical revolutions?) that someone with 20 years experience is only insignificantly better than someone with 5 years experience, economics would support paying them the same. If we want to artificially subsidize some more expensive older workers, they should be subsidized directly by society, not by forcing employers to do so. (There are a lot of jobs where 20 years gives better performance, or where being 51% good va 50% good would be worth a huge premium, but not all.) Where this really gets complex is startups which are growing in headcount and shrinking in equity offer size. An early hire there might be objectively worse than a new marginal hire but has an equity vesting package which makes him vastly better paid for each month today. IIRC it was Zynga which tried to forcibly renegotiate this (instead of just firing people who were presently underperforming, the usual route).
  - sgift 8y ago
    > If the job is something with such a steep learning curve and plateau (maybe due to periodic technical revolutions?) that someone with 20 years experience is only insignificantly better than someone with 5 years experience, economics would support paying them the same. Good news then that this isn't how tech jobs work, where about 99% of all "technical revolutions" are just renaming old things which had fallen out of fashion and use them again.
    - rbanffy 8y ago
      > about 99% of all "technical revolutions" are just renaming old things which had fallen out of fashion and use them again Remember how thrilled web developers were when they discovered MVC the last couple times?
  - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
    Fine but then don't create housing bubbles that lock lower paid younger workers out of the market. I have to relocate in the not too distant future because local rent and home prices eclipse my frozen salary.
0xTJ 8y ago
You're completely ignoring the justification given, and it's a lot more difficult to translate the full situation to your analogy.

danieltillett 8y ago

Unless the bosses at Intel just hate older people (unlikely as they are almost all older people) they are doing this for economic reasons alone. I say this as someone already over-the-hill age wise that we really need to find a way to allow people as they age to be able to accept a lower wage that matches their productivity. Far fewer old people would be made redundant if they got a wage cut every year instead of a raise.

humanrebar 8y ago
First, productivity (as in widgets per hour) is a bad measure for knowledge worker value. It's famously hard to measure the output of teams of engineers over long periods of time, let alone the recent output of a single engineer. Second, it is just taken as a given here that knowledge workers become less productive over time. Why are engineers downhill starting in middle age but not doctors, lawyers, professors, and professional coaches? Third, it's also taken as a given that we can fairly cut the wages of individuals based on... what? Again, we're bad at measuring performance. Are we assuming they're less productive because they're older? How is that OK? It's possible that a 50 year old has become better at relevant things in the last year, surely.
- roenxi 8y ago
  > Second, it is just taken as a given here that knowledge workers become less productive over time. Why are engineers downhill starting in middle age but not doctors, lawyers, professors, and professional coaches? Software engineers in particular. Computers really started to stabilise in the 2003 when single core clock speeds hit a wall. 'Rapid' change since then looks a bit glacial compared to what rapid meant in the 90s. I don't have anything to back it up, but I'm pretty suspicious that a lot of specific techniques that were important in the 90s are no longer important. I know lawyers were in existence in ~500BC and the law famously changes slowly. Doctors, coaches, etc are in a similar boat where the situation now is basically the same as when they were 10 years old. No such similarities in software, the languages, bottlenecks, opportunities and best-practice mindset (in many areas) has changed. It makes sense why software engineers under the age of 30 would have an edge. If hardware continues to plateau (moderate if, given graphics cards) then the current generation will not have the same problem when they are 50. ASIDE: I always wonder if it is really a coincidence that Apple started making inroads at the exact second that being able to quickly incorporate new parts stopped being an exponential advantage.

humanrebar 8y ago

> ...you can't assume the intent by the result alone The "disparate impact theory" in legal reasoning says the opposite, more or less: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact

OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago

That's what a class action is for. They will determine that.