IBM age discrimination lawsuit suddenly ends, suggests Big Blue was willing to pay to avoid discovery process The judge overseeing Jonathan Langley's age discrimination lawsuit against IBM has dismissed the case, which was scheduled to go to trial later this year. The court order [PDF] closing the case, signed on Wednesday by Judge David Ezra in the Texan Western District Court, cites a stipulation of dismissal by Langley and IBM. …
Not always true. My company settled an unfair dismissal claim out of court even though we would almost certainly have won. It was cheaper than fighting (theoretically the lose pays the costs ... but if the loser has little money he will declare bankruptcy and we end up paying our legal costs anyway)
It was cheaper than fighting (theoretically the lose pays the costs ... but if the loser has little money he will declare bankruptcy and we end up paying our legal costs anyway)
You might want to understand the concept of moral hazards. Yes, it's cheaper to settle one case than to fight it. However, you are incentivizing such invalid lawsuits, and guaranteeing more to come. If you'd fought it, you'd lose more money, but so would the other side, and others (lawyers, really) would think twice about filing weak lawsuits against you.
See Newegg's stance on (patent troll) lawsuits:
https://www.newegg.com/insider/newegg-vs-patent-trolls-when-we-win-you-win/
"Not always true. My company settled an unfair dismissal claim out of court even though we would almost certainly have won. It was cheaper than fighting (theoretically the lose pays the costs ... but if the loser has little money he will declare bankruptcy and we end up paying our legal costs anyway)"
That reveals the more disturbing reality that taxpayers have their money taken in order to salary individuals that are a part of an elaborate play. The judicial branch there is pointless, and justice is determined by accountants, not the law.
Downvote because this happens all over the world, not just the USA. The only difference there is that their lawyers are so much more expensive than the rest of the world. That and the very real threat of a hundred billion dollar award against you, should you lose.
Perhaps IT managers and CIOs should take a page from Big Blue's book. After all, IBM apparently thinks getting rid of the old is a good business practice. So I suggest that since IBM is such an old company, that it is no longer relevant and has little to offer businesses. So people making IT decisions should only go with younger, more hip, less experienced, cheaper companies. If there's validity to IBM's research on how to improve productivity and cut costs, it only makes sense to get rid of IBM. IBM's decision to force out their older, more experienced workers is the first signs of the company's own senescence and that its business acuity can no longer be trusted, so move aside peacefully IBM, you're too old to be relevant any more.
Sorry, comrades, but if you want to experience age discrimination come on over to europe where uploading RECENT photos of yourself onto applications is the norm. Plus, there's a reason why the glorious socialist block puts people out to pension at 55. Some idiots call it progress; I call it ageism.
> puts people out to pension at 55.
If someone want to pay me a full pension I'll retire quite happily. Hey I might even carry on doing the bits of my job I enjoy for free and just be glad to be shot of the political in fighting crap that goes with the job.
The only problem is theres no money to pay for all of us over 55s to put our feet up.
In the US, requiring photos on CV's is grounds for race/gender/age/nationality discrimination suits, which is why the requirement died out decades back. Having said that, people can unknowingly enable that kind of discrimination by putting their photo on LinkedIn, or putting past job info (enough to allow matching to a CV) on Facebook.
Poke around LinkedIn long enough and you see that more and more people (as far as I've seen) are opting out of adding photos to their profiles though LI keeps trying to get you to include one. If my profile is only 80% complete because it's lacking that one item, so be it.
Plus, there's a reason why the glorious socialist block puts people out to pension at 55.
That is only some countries in southern Europe, here up north the pension age is already 67. And for some strange reason, those countries where the pension age is below 60 all seem to run into economical problems every couple of years.
20 years, 3 European countries, half a dozen different employers, never once been asked for a photo on my CV. In any case its redundant - most people put a date of birth, and age can anyway be inferred from work history.
I guess a photo could be used for uglism discrimination
Have an upvote and a virtual beer on me for hitting the nail on the head or at least pointing to a well-spoken piece on the value of experience. And this applies to ANY industry, not just software engineering.
If (experienced) managers are reading this, I hope they've learned the value of keeping people happy and not letting their employees' jobs be viewed as just stepping stones. There is nothing wrong with advancement and learning new things, but there should be no stigma against people that like what they're doing and are good at it. We'd all be better off if the mindset of "He's had that job for 20 years... Why isn't he a manager by now?" would just go away. And that also means recognizing people for their experience and rewarding them. How many bugs have been caught and catastrophes averted in all walks of life because someone with experience noticed a pattern that they'd seen before and had the solution at hand? A LOT, and the people that saved the day are never noticed and probably just consider it another day's work.
I guess the short of it is that when you reach a certain level of experience and competency, you make things look easy, and if someone that has no clue sees you solve something too easily, it couldn't have been a hard problem that someone younger and fresher wouldn't have solved in half the time, right?
A note for Millenials that find themselves on a fast track to management or think they're God's gift: Someday you will be viewed as irrelevant and edged out if these trends continue. And ironically it will be when you have that experience under your belt that could really help someone.
"We'd all be better off if the mindset of "He's had that job for 20 years... Why isn't he a manager by now?" would just go away."
This. Definitely this!
If you ever watch any of the "How It Works" type shows, you'll often see people on production lines who are PROUD of the how fast they can work, day in, day out, and have clearly been doing it for many years. Some people LIKE their jobs and don't want to be promoted out of it or forced to retire.
I admire those people because the job needs to be done, it needs to be done well. I know I could never do that job for more than a few weeks. The job I do is sort of technical and involves traveling around a lot. Maybe a 1000 miles per week. I love it. Many people I speak to wonder how I can do a job like that. Lots of driving and seeing the county with short bursts of diagnostic fault find and repair is what I enjoy doing. I just hope that sometime in the next few weeks I can get back to it. Oh, and I'm fast approaching 60 now. I can usually find the fault pretty much instantly these days, usually just from the short fault description on the job sheet. As others have said, experience takes time and counts for a lot.
Back in the day, the Civil Service had "Special Merit" promotions, where someone could be appointed to a higher grade and still carry out the work they had done at a lower grade. Usually these were engineer/scientist boffin types who did not have to do the normal admin/bureaucratic stuff that was expected at the higher grade. As I recall this was available up to Senior Principal level (roughly between NATO Code 5 & 6).
I'd disagree that someone fresh out of school knows how to write software. They obviously know how to write code, its part of their coursework, but there's a bit of a disconnect between writing code and writing software (unless all you're doing is form filling in a pre-built framework, in which case its not really progreamming, is it?)
I've actually made quite a good living for many decades out of neophyte programmers and management who think that 'young' and 'programmer' are necessary to make product. Anyone who's been in the trade for any length of time will know that there's a finite limit to the complexity you can carry in your heaf, a limit that's not as obvious with software as it would be if you were, for example, building a bridge. The inevitable result is a bit of an embarassment for the company, a phone call to someone like me and some good eating for a bit. Its a pity in a way because the neophyte often ends up going elsewhere instead of the ideal resolution which is they learn how to do it properly and then employ their energy and ambition to go on to do great things -- things that actually work.
The original article referenced in this thread was partly about getting rid of older, more expensive workers but it was also about offshoring to cheaper countries. This type of offshoring can yield great savings for a company but all to often the cases I've heard of haven't produced quite the results that management would have liked. The reason for this is that 'you get what you pay for'. Its true that some countries' labor costs are a lot lower than Europe or the US's but its also true that the people who live in those countries aren't stupid, they might work at low rates to get the job but if they know what they're doing then they'll want the proper rate for the job (and there's enough of a skilled labor shortage that they can get it). Management doesn't twig to this so they hire the cheapest and are a little surprised when they fall foul of 'pay peanuts, get monkies' truism. (There's probably smooth talking middllemen in there inflating both the costs and the expectations for the work as well.) Ultimately it may just pay to keep the skills and work in-house because if you really outsource it then you're also really giving the company away.
In 2001, as a result of the Dot.com bust, I (along with about 10000+ others) was laid off from IBM; I became an IBM employee after IBM acquired Informix. Initially
I was impressed with the professionalism of the handling of the acquisition, being informed "business as usual, nothing will change etc". Not too long after my manager (a long term senior Informix dev engineer) was replaced by a young Indian with a business degree with zero understanding of the technical issues of
developing and maintaining a large code base, and started giving me erratic and bizarre directions, and it soon became obvious he had no clue how to manage
a bunch of engineers. Eventually, I received notice of my termination for "performance" reasons, despite the fact that I handled high profile customers and had become the go-to person of last resort. I was given a severance package of $9000 after signing a "will not sue" agreement, which, at the time, I did not realize was not legally enforceable in California. I also received a multipage document that contained a clause stating that the company had a policy that allowed termination of employees over the age of 50; at the time I was 51, and have been dealing with age discrimination ever since, including with the likes of Intel, Google, Apple, HP and many others; the only jobs I have been able to acquire have been by virtual (phone, skype etc) sight unseen hiring, where in one notable instance, the job vanished on day one; hasn't stopped me though ....
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