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If employees don’t lose value as they age then why do employers want to get rid of them? It is not because they don’t like them. There is only one reason and th

If employees don’t lose value as they age then why do employers want to get rid of them? It is not because they don’t like them. There is only one reason and that is they are not productive enough for their wage compared to someone younger. Just because it is hard to measure productivity doesn’t mean it can’t be measured. Most employers have a reasonable idea of the price/productivity of their employees. What we have done by not allowing the cutting of wages with age and declining productivity is introduce a lottery event. Some employees as they age “win” by getting pay rises every year until the retire, while other are thrown on the scrap heap early. Collectively the decline in productivity is reflected in average wages, but the human cost is very unevenly distributed. People in every profession decline as they age. You certainly don’t want an old surgeon operating on you. Job productivity is a story of rapid rise until a certain point, a plateau, and then decline; slow at first and then faster. I wish it was otherwise as I am now past the plateau :(

microtherion 8y ago
> You certainly don’t want an old surgeon operating on you. When I had gallbladder surgery a few years ago, it felt VERY reassuring to have a surgeon in his 50s who could cite a track record of hundreds or thousands such surgeries, with a minuscule complication rate. You do NOT want a surgeon fresh out of med school who hacked a GAN into a surplus Tesla industrial robot to perform the procedure, no matter how bleeding edge that would be.
- danieltillett 8y ago
  Surgeons reach their peak in their late 40s and decline. If the level the surgeon got to was very high then they may well still be very good, if not as good as they were when younger. I do agree that you don't want to be one of a younger surgeons learning cases.
humanrebar 8y ago
> People in every profession decline as they age. Supreme Court appointees aren't in their 20s. Neither are Premier League coaches. Same for granting tenure to university professors. And citing price/productivity is ignoring the points I made about productivity being both hard to measure with any accuracy and being a bad measure of value besides.
- danieltillett 8y ago
  It seems the same response has come up a few times here. Everyone starts out at a relatively low level, rises to a max and then decline as they age. Some people reach such a high level that even in decline they are still very productive. I like to think I am one of these people ;) Just because something is hard to measure with certainty does not mean that it can't be measured. While your boss might not be able to precisely measure your productivity they will likely have a pretty good idea.
  - mmt 8y ago
    > Everyone starts out at a relatively low level, rises to a max and then decline as they age > While your boss might not be able to precisely measure your productivity they will likely have a pretty good idea. You've repeatedly asserted both of these points but haven't pointed to any evidence to back them up. I think most commenters here are being particularly polite in talking about the imprecision or difficulty in measuring performance. The less polite assertion is: people managers are, in general, downright incompetent at the part of their job. We've routinely seen reports of CEOs being extremely highly-compensated despite not actually running a company well. There have even been articles suggesting that there's no difference in performance between the more highly-sought-after (and paid) CEOs and other ones, but nothing rigorous. There's no reason to believe the ineptitude wouldn't extend all the way down. As for your assertion about everyone declining as they age, I think you only need to look at any recent research on dementia, as that has debunked the notion that cognitive decline is a normal part of aging. If cognitive decline isn't to be expected merely from age, it doesn't stand to reason that the productivity caused by that cognition would be expected to decline, either.
    - danieltillett 8y ago
      I can’t believe that anyone thinks the brain is somehow the only organ of the human body that does not decline with age - as for evidence start with the wiki page on this topic [0]. Once again I can’t believe that people think their boss(es) don’t know how productive they are. While it is not easy and mistakes are often made, it is not difficult to know approximately how productive your reports are. If as a boss you don’t know this you should be fired for incompetence. Everyone declines with age, but not everyone gets dementia. You have made an extraordinary claim that there are some people that don’t suffer cognitive decline as they age. Are you able to provide any evidence to back up this claim? 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_brain

microtherion 8y ago

> You certainly don’t want an old surgeon operating on you. When I had gallbladder surgery a few years ago, it felt VERY reassuring to have a surgeon in his 50s who could cite a track record of hundreds or thousands such surgeries, with a minuscule complication rate. You do NOT want a surgeon fresh out of med school who hacked a GAN into a surplus Tesla industrial robot to perform the procedure, no matter how bleeding edge that would be.

danieltillett 8y ago
Surgeons reach their peak in their late 40s and decline. If the level the surgeon got to was very high then they may well still be very good, if not as good as they were when younger. I do agree that you don't want to be one of a younger surgeons learning cases.

humanrebar 8y ago

> People in every profession decline as they age. Supreme Court appointees aren't in their 20s. Neither are Premier League coaches. Same for granting tenure to university professors. And citing price/productivity is ignoring the points I made about productivity being both hard to measure with any accuracy and being a bad measure of value besides.

danieltillett 8y ago
It seems the same response has come up a few times here. Everyone starts out at a relatively low level, rises to a max and then decline as they age. Some people reach such a high level that even in decline they are still very productive. I like to think I am one of these people ;) Just because something is hard to measure with certainty does not mean that it can't be measured. While your boss might not be able to precisely measure your productivity they will likely have a pretty good idea.
- mmt 8y ago
  > Everyone starts out at a relatively low level, rises to a max and then decline as they age > While your boss might not be able to precisely measure your productivity they will likely have a pretty good idea. You've repeatedly asserted both of these points but haven't pointed to any evidence to back them up. I think most commenters here are being particularly polite in talking about the imprecision or difficulty in measuring performance. The less polite assertion is: people managers are, in general, downright incompetent at the part of their job. We've routinely seen reports of CEOs being extremely highly-compensated despite not actually running a company well. There have even been articles suggesting that there's no difference in performance between the more highly-sought-after (and paid) CEOs and other ones, but nothing rigorous. There's no reason to believe the ineptitude wouldn't extend all the way down. As for your assertion about everyone declining as they age, I think you only need to look at any recent research on dementia, as that has debunked the notion that cognitive decline is a normal part of aging. If cognitive decline isn't to be expected merely from age, it doesn't stand to reason that the productivity caused by that cognition would be expected to decline, either.
  - danieltillett 8y ago
    I can’t believe that anyone thinks the brain is somehow the only organ of the human body that does not decline with age - as for evidence start with the wiki page on this topic [0]. Once again I can’t believe that people think their boss(es) don’t know how productive they are. While it is not easy and mistakes are often made, it is not difficult to know approximately how productive your reports are. If as a boss you don’t know this you should be fired for incompetence. Everyone declines with age, but not everyone gets dementia. You have made an extraordinary claim that there are some people that don’t suffer cognitive decline as they age. Are you able to provide any evidence to back up this claim? 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_brain