IBM is also the biggest Patent Troll on the planet[1]. I met a Patent and IP Lawyer at a Code Camp in San Luis Obispo. He said he did Legal Patent and Licensing work for IBM for many years and claimed that they generated over 1 Billion $ / year just from their Licensing deals and patent enforcement alone, and that it was their biggest source of income. I tried to see if those # in his claim were true, and it looks like they are, even to this day.
> Between 2008 and 2012 IBM’s patent portfolio generated between $1.1 and $1.2 billion per year.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2016/01/19/if-patent...
[1] Source: https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs...
Turns out, again, that management had zero plans for innovation. Instead, they only had the standard MBA plans : we're going to get a cheaper, MUCH worse, workforce. No more decisions to make for management, so they don't have to take the risk of being wrong anymore.
Innovation ... died. Bill Gates became the richest man in the world taking one of their more obvious opportunities. But managers looked good to other managers, you know, in ways they were taught in their MBA education, and only in those ways. IBM ... withered and died, in the opinion of a lot of people. IBM watson, their poster child for innovation, is not even a bad joke in the AI research community. It's actually unknown. It's an empty shell.
Today, even the financial community is saying stuff like IBM is like McDonalds ... it's a real estate play (you're essentially betting on their ability to sell-and-lease-back their real-estate portfolio and pay out the short term profits from that to their shareholders). There is much justification for that in their financial reports.
It's a bit wider than that: they own some things, and they're rent-seekers, who are to deep in debt and are finding they have to sell ever more income-generating assets. Every product they have, even the ones with deep market lock-in is declining fast.
https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-a...
Not advocating this, but don’t be miserable over a small sum of money. They’ll probably work with you on a repayment plan if necessary.
How much of this effect was IBM, how much was the economics of America at the time, and how much was specific to this one man is debatable. But he definitely appeared to live well, whatever it was.
Maybe that's not what he did but I wouldn't write of "customer support" so easily - it could mean a wide range of things.
I know that I might face that same reckoning when I get older - out of date skills pushing me out of the market - so I'm actively taking steps now to set up habits that keep me on top.
Try working with some older people. My last corporate team -- one of the most senior and advanced in a major corporation, and carrying some of the most critical work -- was more than 50% "older developers".
Best team I worked on. Most competent. Least bullshit. "Get 'er done" -- and don't unduly fuck over the future while you're at it.
Meanwhile, another part of the corporation was busy off-shoring as much as they could to lower cost developers in India. You'd spend months in meetings and one-on-one training, and they still wouldn't get it. And these were -- a bit different than the norm -- direct employees, not contractors. Mostly in their 20's and 30's.
I'm not saying there aren't good, competent people in India -- or from India, or whatever.
I'm saying that these "employment transition" actions aren't about that. "Better" employees.
It's not the competence -- nor the flexibility and learning; my team was doing both all the time.
It's the money.
https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-a...
I'd suggest in addition planning financially for a sharp decline in income in your 50s and 60s.
One quote from the article:
> IBM [...] Targeted people for layoffs and firings with techniques that tilted against older workers, even when the company rated them high performers. In some instances, the money saved from the departures went toward hiring young replacements. [...] Told some older employees being laid off that their skills were out of date, but then brought them back as contract workers, often for the same work at lower pay and fewer benefits.
> Told some older employees being laid off that their skills were out of date, but then brought them back as contract workers, often for the same work at lower pay and fewer benefits.
Sounds like kind of a crappy move, but it doesn’t prove ageism.
Is it still a difference when the functional effect is that workers over 45 are the primary target?
I'm slightly sad this comment is being downvoted. I can see why someone would, as especially wrt IBM, there's a decent history/precedent for their being aggressively ageist, and it's a topic on which we certainly don't want to pass over without a hard look. (Full disclosure, I tend to side on the "more worker protections" team, but I want to try and take the parent in good faith and think it's a point worth considering)
That being said, I don't think the OP's comment is something we should ignore, that ageism can appear as an emergent symptom of simply culling an aging workforce.
Here's my napkin math for this scenario, and I'm admittedly playing devils advocate here: You hire 10 new people every year. Every year, every employee has a 1% chance of going "stale". You don't fire every year, or at least, don't fire aggressively. If push comes to shove, when you do fire, you try to clean house. Wouldn't you naturally find the highest % of firings in the older brackets?
Anyway, I have no particular reason to think this is true, I just think it's not so unreasonable a point to make that it should be downvoted in terms of argued. I've specifically seen both cases, older higher payed workers culled on-whole in indefensible fashion, removing domain expertise and powerhouses. I've also seen employees start phoning it in, and for there to be a meaningful epsilon of time before anyone catches on.
To be very clear; I'm personally convinced IBM crossed some lines, given the evidence. However, I can see situations where there's enough ambiguity that I don't want to shut down people asking those questions.
Maybe this is being pedantic, but I'd split this into two discussions. Might there not be reasonable and justafiable firings that may skew older? And secondly, Should we have other systems in play such that the former isn't such a life-shaking event?
Edit: Another note, but I find myself additionally sad after reading your post, because while I'd like it to be true that "most people don't like the idea ...", the last N years of labor/union/corporate/antitrust legislation (or lack thereof, especially post-gig-economy) don't lend confidence towards that. This is yet another reason I think there's merit towards contemplating the nature of the systems in place currently, and what "smells"/emergent patterns those systems have.
