The case shines a spotlight on the ongoing HR issues at IBM
It also shows how the lack of effective enforcement and oversight has encouraged and enabled it. I know people on all sides of this fight, newcomers that got hired in as replacements for the grey beards getting pushed out, old timers that were the brains and blood of a generation the made IBM a titan. Sadly I also met some of the management and HR people that were all to happy to swing the axe to shore up the balance sheet fiddling that papered over senior managements rudderless failures as the organization lost money, talent, and reputation year after year.
The saddest thing to me is that this has happened over and over at big blue. The punishment for getting caught takes too long, and is to small to discourage ongoing purges. After the first big cull of the gold watch crowd, there was a pause while the cases foundered their way through the courts. When it became clear the enforcement was toothless they doubled down hard, trying to block accountability through use of contact labor, arbitration clauses, trickery, and political maneuvers. But it was of such scale it was obvious even from the outside.
Their hiring and recruiting process was also unabashedly targeted and discriminatory. The old timers need not apply was made pretty clear.
We shouldn't be relying on IBM to write down incriminating material, we need laws that provide transparency on hiring and firing of workers, and supports interventions as soon as the patterns of abuse appear, not after 15 years of endless appeals.
Justice in a wrongful termination or age discrimination case needs to be delivered when the victims are still alive and in the labor pool.