6 ms·

Ooh, tricky. Is it a case of corporate douchebaggery, hiring recent grads at half the salary of the veterans and then laying off the veterans? Or is it 'lay of

Ooh, tricky. Is it a case of corporate douchebaggery, hiring recent grads at half the salary of the veterans and then laying off the veterans? Or is it 'lay off the fogeys that can't let go of Fortran 77 long enough to learn Java or JS or C#' I've seen both circumstances in my career. Given that it's IBM, I am inclined towards the former.

mandelbrotwurst 8y ago
Is that first example age discrimination? In that case it sounds like they're discriminating based on what salary the workers are willing to accept and not their age.
- sillyquiet 8y ago
  No it's not illegal, in my not-a-labor-lawyer opinion. Just douchebaggery that should possibly be illegal. It's only undisputedly illegal if they refused to hire new devs based on age alone. Or if they used age as their metric for letting people go, but why would they do that, since they undoubtedly know what folks make. I do think though that this douchebaggery would have a disproportionate impact on older folks, just give years of experience = higher salary and all that.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    Are you saying that it should be illegal/possibly illegal/DB to make layoff/firing decisions taking salary heavily into account? To me, a layoff is about trimming expenses and retaining the maximum value/output per dollar of future total salary. If that means that person A is (perceived to be) more valuable per dollar spent on salary than person B, person A should be more likely to be retained. Why should that be illegal (or even judged to be DB behavior)? In theory, a company is paying a person to deliver value, not simply to have been stably at the company (or in their career or "be old"), right? (If context matters, I'm 47 and so "old" by some measures...)
    - sillyquiet 8y ago
      No, I meant it should be illegal if age is being used as a proxy for salary. But otherwise yeah, it's short-sighted corporate douchebaggery to replace experienced folks with recent grads to save money. penny-wise and pound-foolish, myopic, throwing out the baby with the bathwater, whichever cliche you want to use.
    - ryandrake 8y ago
      If you’re just laying off people based on salary divided by value, the CEO would often be the first to go, purely because the numerator is orders of magnitude larger than everyone else. Some CEOs make 1000+ times what their median employee makes. Are they really 1000x more productive?
      - sokoloff 8y ago
        If the VCs have funded and believe in that particular CEO, maybe... Is Elon Musk worth 1000x the value of a randomly selected Tesla employee to Tesla? I think probably so. (Compare the market cap impact of Elon's sudden departure or incapacitation to that of another randomly chosen employee as just one proxy.)
        lexs 8y ago
        This also depends on your definition of value. Sure Elon is good for promotion and endlessly raising funds, but how do you compare that to actually engineering the product, producing it etc.
        sokoloff 8y ago
        If Tesla (or any other company that's burning cash at a prodigious rate) doesn't keep raising money, there is no more company.
        lexs 8y ago
        If Tesla (or any other company) doesn't keep producing products, there is no more company? I realise that raising capital is necessary but my point was that both aspects of the company are "valuable" and that it is hard to say yes person X is definitely 1000x more valuable although they are working in different departments.
- notacoward 8y ago
  > Is that first example age discrimination? That is a really good question. The short answer is that it's generally legal to consider salary demands in a hiring situation, but not in the context of firing or laying people off. On the other hand, it's super easy to muddy those waters. Change the performance requirements for the level that's full of older workers, and put them on improvement plans when they're found wanting. Phase out their current role, and oh look, there are no new roles requiring their skills so they'll have to take a demotion or quit. And many other tricks. Ultimately it all comes down to intent and effect, not the pretext the company uses.
  - traek 8y ago
    > The short answer is that it's generally legal to consider salary demands in a hiring situation, but not in the context of firing or laying people off. This is just plainly untrue. See Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins.
    - wahern 8y ago
      TL;DR: It is legal to consider salary demands in either situation, so long as such consideration is based on years of service or some similar metric rather than age, per se. At least in the context of the Federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA).
    - notacoward 8y ago
      If you're going to claim a complex statement is untrue, it would be constructive to identify which part, and Hazen didn't have anything to do with the hiring case. It would also help to have the facts on your side. As it turns out, Hazen didn't even provide a clear answer for the firing/layoff case. On the one hand, they decided that interference with a pension did not automatically violate ADEA. On the other, they decided that it did violate ERISA and sent the case back to the appeals court to be decided in accordance with their decision that Hazen had in fact acted illegally and willfully. So, basically, you have misread or misrepresented the case. [1] https://www.oyez.org/cases/1992/91-1600 https://www.oyez.org/cases/1992/91-1600

mandelbrotwurst 8y ago

Is that first example age discrimination? In that case it sounds like they're discriminating based on what salary the workers are willing to accept and not their age.

sillyquiet 8y ago
No it's not illegal, in my not-a-labor-lawyer opinion. Just douchebaggery that should possibly be illegal. It's only undisputedly illegal if they refused to hire new devs based on age alone. Or if they used age as their metric for letting people go, but why would they do that, since they undoubtedly know what folks make. I do think though that this douchebaggery would have a disproportionate impact on older folks, just give years of experience = higher salary and all that.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- sokoloff 8y ago
  Are you saying that it should be illegal/possibly illegal/DB to make layoff/firing decisions taking salary heavily into account? To me, a layoff is about trimming expenses and retaining the maximum value/output per dollar of future total salary. If that means that person A is (perceived to be) more valuable per dollar spent on salary than person B, person A should be more likely to be retained. Why should that be illegal (or even judged to be DB behavior)? In theory, a company is paying a person to deliver value, not simply to have been stably at the company (or in their career or "be old"), right? (If context matters, I'm 47 and so "old" by some measures...)
  - sillyquiet 8y ago
    No, I meant it should be illegal if age is being used as a proxy for salary. But otherwise yeah, it's short-sighted corporate douchebaggery to replace experienced folks with recent grads to save money. penny-wise and pound-foolish, myopic, throwing out the baby with the bathwater, whichever cliche you want to use.
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    If you’re just laying off people based on salary divided by value, the CEO would often be the first to go, purely because the numerator is orders of magnitude larger than everyone else. Some CEOs make 1000+ times what their median employee makes. Are they really 1000x more productive?
    - sokoloff 8y ago
      If the VCs have funded and believe in that particular CEO, maybe... Is Elon Musk worth 1000x the value of a randomly selected Tesla employee to Tesla? I think probably so. (Compare the market cap impact of Elon's sudden departure or incapacitation to that of another randomly chosen employee as just one proxy.)
      - lexs 8y ago
        This also depends on your definition of value. Sure Elon is good for promotion and endlessly raising funds, but how do you compare that to actually engineering the product, producing it etc.
        sokoloff 8y ago
        If Tesla (or any other company that's burning cash at a prodigious rate) doesn't keep raising money, there is no more company.
        lexs 8y ago
        If Tesla (or any other company) doesn't keep producing products, there is no more company? I realise that raising capital is necessary but my point was that both aspects of the company are "valuable" and that it is hard to say yes person X is definitely 1000x more valuable although they are working in different departments.
notacoward 8y ago
> Is that first example age discrimination? That is a really good question. The short answer is that it's generally legal to consider salary demands in a hiring situation, but not in the context of firing or laying people off. On the other hand, it's super easy to muddy those waters. Change the performance requirements for the level that's full of older workers, and put them on improvement plans when they're found wanting. Phase out their current role, and oh look, there are no new roles requiring their skills so they'll have to take a demotion or quit. And many other tricks. Ultimately it all comes down to intent and effect, not the pretext the company uses.
- traek 8y ago
  > The short answer is that it's generally legal to consider salary demands in a hiring situation, but not in the context of firing or laying people off. This is just plainly untrue. See Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins.
  - wahern 8y ago
    TL;DR: It is legal to consider salary demands in either situation, so long as such consideration is based on years of service or some similar metric rather than age, per se. At least in the context of the Federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA).
  - notacoward 8y ago
    If you're going to claim a complex statement is untrue, it would be constructive to identify which part, and Hazen didn't have anything to do with the hiring case. It would also help to have the facts on your side. As it turns out, Hazen didn't even provide a clear answer for the firing/layoff case. On the one hand, they decided that interference with a pension did not automatically violate ADEA. On the other, they decided that it did violate ERISA and sent the case back to the appeals court to be decided in accordance with their decision that Hazen had in fact acted illegally and willfully. So, basically, you have misread or misrepresented the case. [1] https://www.oyez.org/cases/1992/91-1600 https://www.oyez.org/cases/1992/91-1600