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Intel under investigation over age discrimination in massive job cuts
- RoyTyrell 8y agoIf true, that's both sad and stupid. I've learned so much from my more senior engineers 10-20-30yrs older than me; everything from the "craft" of writing software, to better ways of debugging, to more practical software engineering methods, hell to how to deal with the business side. I can't imagine anyone with any real knowledge would can them. The only valid reason to can older engineers is to reduce labor costs by both getting higher paid employees off the books and keep around the 23yr olds who will work 60hrs a week.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoKeeping the juniors might not always be the best. You might find out just how much hand holding they got from seniors and reap the "benefits" then.
- api 8y agoSomething very similar happens when companies outsource to lower skilled much cheaper overseas engineers. I'm not aware of a single example of that where the company hasn't lost ground as a result. But hey it looks good on a spreadsheet.
- martinald 8y agoOn the converse side I think there are dozens of startups who've made awesome products using remote developers which wouldn't have been able to get started/got to MVP paying SF engineering salaries.
- aNoob7000 8y agoThat's fine for a startup when everything is being built from the ground up. A company that's been around for 20,30,40+ years the old folks have a lot of domain knowledge that has been built up that no amount of documentation and technical savvy is going to overcome.
- Alex3917 8y ago> Keeping the juniors might not always be the best. The real issue is that the government isn't putting CEOs in prison for creating software with security issues, so companies are able to reduce their expenses by shifting the costs of bad software onto the general public.
- jpadkins 8y agodo you really want to live in a world where founders can be put in jail for writing insecure code?
- Alex3917 8y agoYes. People can go to prison for malpractice in other areas, like medicine or civil engineering, why should software development be any different?
- SamReidHughes 8y agoBecause mind your own business, that's why. Or do you want to force the software industry overseas?
- sir_kin 8y agoI'd rather people be held accountable for what they create, especially when it involves me, my stuff, or my data. I'd rather firms like Equifax be regulated into the ground than get a free pass due to scaremongering. (coincidentally, Equifax is in an industry that will NEVER be forced overseas.)
- SamReidHughes 8y agoAll you want is a scapegoat for your bloodlust.
- arbie 8y agoSoftware comes with an EULA typically indemnifying the creator from any negative effects of using the software.
- headmelted 8y agoIt's still not right, but if the cuts were targeted based on age I do wonder how much it would really be to do with salary/overtime versus protecting their position over the long term. I'd expect for a tech company in Intel's position they'd be more concerned about the brain drain caused by a retiring workforce over the next 10-15 years, especially if many of those cuts would be expected to land at a resurgent AMD in the near term.
- wastedhours 8y agoI'd be interested to see how the break down of technical vs managerial is in those layoffs - could it be that older workers have been "promoted" out of technical roles into business roles that are easier to cull?
- Waterluvian 8y agoI've very much experienced both sides of it. Older engineers who have so much valuable wisdom, and older engineers who are stuck in tech 10 years ago, getting pretty upset about why we are bothering to use ES6 features at all. I'd hate to lose the former.
- jesseryoung 8y agoAgreed, I've had mentors who were decades my senior that provided me both with engineering advice as well as solid professional advice. Unfortunately, I've worked with plenty more individuals in the previous category than the former. Maybe it's got something to do with my industry (medical) but it seems like a lot of the senior engineers in this field have just lost motivation or have moved their focus elsewhere. Knowledge and experience only get you so far, it's useless if you can't (or won't) do anything with it.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 8y agoHopefully it's easy to tell. I once interviewed a guy from a very large computer manufacturer with 12 years of "software development" experience who couldn't write a single line of code when prompted.
- Waterluvian 8y agoI badly want to spend a single summer at a company where you can gain experience as a developer without actually knowing anything. I bet it's a bloated bureaucracy. I want to understand that.
- londons_explore 8y ago40 percent of those laid off were over 40. Doesn't really sound bad considering over 50 percent of one's working life happens over the age of 40
- p49k 8y agoYou can’t really evaluate if it was bad or not unless you know what percentage of the total workforce was over 40 before the layoffs. The lower that number is (below 40%), the more disproportionate the action was.
- pc86 8y agoYeah the math is a LOT more complicated than that. You just say say "only 25% of employees are 41+ therefore this was discriminatory" unless the goal of the layoffs is a normal distribution of ages company-wide, which I think is unlikely. What departments were affects most? Was seniority a factor? Was pay a factor? Were certain projects, departments, or teams exempt from layoffs? Without having very detailed data about who was let go and what the justification was nobody can say whether it was discriminatory.
- wooter 8y agodiscrimination vs. discrepancy. I find it odd that many people jump to the first while simultaneously holding the belief that corporations only care about profit.
- pc86 8y agoWhat do you meant as far as discrimination v. discrepancy? Just because numbers don't line up doesn't automatically mean there is nefarious intent. Corporations can care only about profit and still operate within the bounds of the law.
- wooter 8y agothats what I'm saying. many people jump to 'discrimination' when its merely a discrepancy. discrepancies exist everywhere for entirely benign reasons. furthermore, believing its discrimination for its own sake (like age discrimination) would contradict the belief that companies optimize for profit (which I don't think is a bad thing) since there no absolute causality there.
- nikanj 8y agoI'm saddened to see Intel has taken a good gulp of the "Young people are smarter"-Kool Aid
- chillwaves 8y ago*cheaper
- shados 8y agoThis. You're a bean counter and you are tasked with making up as much money as possible via layoff, while losing as few people as possible. You possibly don't even know the age of the people on your spreadsheet beyond what you can assume from titles and roles. You go down the list and cut the big numbers in teams with more people than average (likely more juniors that are mentored by the seniors with big numbers next to their name). End result: you "discriminated" against older people. Though really you just discriminated against higher salaries. It will hurt the company but all layoffs do.
- ihsw2 8y agoIt is a combination of cost and populism, where younger people are attracted to companies that pander to them and they are willing to accept less pay for more work. It's a fascinating phenomenon and to see identity politics enter this situation is equally fascinating.
- s2g 8y ago> where younger people are attracted to companies that pander to them because older people don't wnat companies that offer better benefits, easier leave for family issues, less hours, etc...? > they are willing to accept less pay for more work in an effort to get ahead and make more for the last 30 working years of their lives, so that when they do have a family at home they can afford it.
- bufferoverflow 8y agoIt's actually established science that your fluid intelligence drops after hitting 30's, and the skills for certain tasks even earlier. It's sad, but it's dumb to deny biological reality. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SBJ2KTl2f3c/VjPN9JeWLiI/AAAAAAAAVdo/fKBVoZw287o/s1600/Age-decline-in-intelligence.jpg http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SBJ2KTl2f3c/VjPN9JeWLiI/AAAAAAAAVd... https://study.com/cimages/multimages/16/adultintelligence.jpg https://study.com/cimages/multimages/16/adultintelligence.jp... https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-496a52a13eaee1e99f39e3c9e4d5ec73-c https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-496a52a13eaee1e99f39e3...
- stevespang 8y ago15 years ago in a downturn I applied to a well known American corporation, got an interview, but also got a thank you letter (we're not interested) a few weeks later. 3 months later I got a letter from an attorney's office said sign here to enter our class action for hiring age discrimination suit and you agree to receive $800. I signed and cashed the check. Later I discovered this corporation was famous for hiring kids and working them to death, never hired older folks.
- pc86 8y agoThis doesn't seem at all relevant to the article.
- Shivetya 8y agonot sure how it is handled elsewhere but friends having gone through a reduction in force (the polite term) both gave me similar documents which listed affected positions and age of employee. no further details were given but in small enough shops its easy to know who is who. the interesting part is that they detailed all positions and not just those let go. I have to assume that age discrimination is the easier one to hit on as the others are to blatantly obvious if they occur outside of government positions
- downrightmike 8y agoThe company makes those sheets up to show that they are not discriminating on age. https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/discrimination/agedisc https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/discrimination/agedisc
- merinowool 8y agoCan someone explain to me why it is acceptable to force unwanted employees on company's payroll?
- simion314 8y agoIs about discrimination, say if you have 2 employees A and B, you have to fire one of them, if you use criteria like who is more sexy,or race, or political views,religion or family relation then you are not fair and workers had to pay with their life in the past to have fair working conditions and some other groups again had to made sacrifices to have equal rights. In this case maybe Intel is not guilty and the age issue is a correlation with the salary.
- risotto_groupon 8y agoHow long are we going to accept, "Oops, the computer was racist!" as an excuse? Its about as transparent as Roseanne on Ambien at this point.
- merinowool 8y agoOk, but how is that a problem? If employer doesn't want you, you look for another job.
- simion314 8y agoBecause only work related criteria should be considered, the employer should not ask for sex and decide who to keep based on sexual performance, or ask the employees to vote for X to keep their job. The laws are in place because of bad behavior and were not created as a solution for a non existing problem.
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- makecheck 8y agoI don’t know their motivation but if their goal was “fewest layoffs with most money saved short-term”, it would be hard not to bias layoffs toward more senior people. Senior, highest-paid employees don’t have to be the oldest but probably are. Of course, that isn’t necessarily a good idea for other reasons (losing all that ingrained knowledge and experience, etc.). It would mainly make sense as a desperate short-term cost savings.
- Bartweiss 8y agoThis is certainly possible, but I'd be a bit surprised if Intel was cutting costs that naively - I don't think they're as strapped for cash as the businesses that make this move. When IBM did this, they were intentionally targeting age qua age - their internal documents set age/experience targets rather than salary ones, and claimed that a younger "tech-native" workforce would produce better results. Admittedly, they seem to have had some monetary motives too, but even those were shady: by firing older workers who couldn't get new jobs, they turned them into a pool of contract workers without pensions or benefits.
- 40acres 8y agoI don't think anything will come of this, Intel I think has a pretty good cover. Internally it's no secret that one of the big criteria were the results of your most recent performance evaluation. If you received a certain stock grant that highlighted you for reduction -- however the kicker is only people of a certain pay grade could receive that certain stock level. Most people who are in that grade are at least 30 years old.
- twiceaday 8y agoPerhaps Intel made too many promotions based on time served and not merit and the cuts was a time to correct.