"IBM's employment actions have always been based on skills, not age,"
Bullshit! I honestly can't comprehend how the slimy bastards that come out with this crap can sleep at night. There was a massive skills shortage when I was there. You couldn't get hold of the people who knew anything because they were all voluntarily leaving or being made redundant. Some of the customer calls were quite frankly embarrassing.
And as for 'hours spent learning', I lost count of the number of times there were emails for mandatory education spanning weeks. Learning plans that had embedded learning plans on top of other content. And the time they officially allocated was something like 40 hours. Nowhere near enough time.
Its all about money. How cheap can you go on the resource, how big a margin can you make on the account, what will the customer put up with. Its a fine balancing act that has NOTHING to do with the skill set required to perform the tasks at hand.