5 ms·

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 hir

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
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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.
  - wins32767 8y ago
    For a big enough company, potentially. A bad executive's impact is multiplied across everyone in their org and can quickly destroy a previously high performing group. Think of it this way, the output of an exec (like all managers) is an organization that functions well. If a well functioning group gives an average 10% improvement in productivity to everyone (which, if you think about the delta between the best and worst teams/groups you've been a part of is on the low side) that's 1000x the contribution of an IC for a company of 10,000 people.

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.
- wins32767 8y ago
  For a big enough company, potentially. A bad executive's impact is multiplied across everyone in their org and can quickly destroy a previously high performing group. Think of it this way, the output of an exec (like all managers) is an organization that functions well. If a well functioning group gives an average 10% improvement in productivity to everyone (which, if you think about the delta between the best and worst teams/groups you've been a part of is on the low side) that's 1000x the contribution of an IC for a company of 10,000 people.