This is true. However, as I explained above, those 5000 stock options were awarded to me as golden handcuffs and I couldn’t sell them for several years.
My 401k was in mutual funds. This issue might be more typical among high tech workers as golden handcuffs in the form of stock options are very common in the industry.
Yeah nothing you could have done. But I was agreeing with others here that typically as soon as you can sell them, do so at least to the extent that it won’t remain a large part of your portfolio.
In principle, it’s fine since it adds skin into the game but I dislike that it becomes a form of secondary compensation. It should be a small bonus only but you’re right that it’s almost an industry staple in IT companies.
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Apologies, harish7631. I was unaware of the above when I posted and I did not face that limitation personally. Sorry you had such poor fortune.
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Age discrimination
Are you a “Dinobaby”?
Everything old is new again. And this topic is FAR from dead . . . . especially at IBM. From the LA Times dated 12 February 2022:
IBM executives discussed in emails how to force out older workers and derided them as “Dinobabies” who should be made an “Extinct species,” according to a court filing in an age discrimination case against the company.
The communications show “highly incriminating animus” against older employees by officials who at the time were in the company’s “highest ranks,” according to the filing Friday.
The partially redacted filing says the emails surfaced in separate arbitration proceedings but it doesn’t reveal the identities of the company officials or indicate when they were speaking. A judge has ordered the release of versions of the underlying documents.
Read the entire story here:
IBM emails show millennial workers favored over ‘Dinobabies’
Since start of this thread, nothing has changed. If you’re age 40 or older, keep a weather eye. There might be much younger people out there who can do your job for less money. What the heck, many of them were not born in the USA and might not even be resident in the USA!! It’s dog eat dog out there on an international basis.
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I cannot speak for IBM but there’s also an issue with senior staff with how outdated their skill sets often are in terms of computer literacy and change agility.
So it’s not always just a question of doing the same job at a lower cost as it is about doing the job without needing tons of hand-holding/extra retraining, and without tons of resistance to changes because they’ve done something one way for 20 years and you’re moving faster than they adapt.
That said, it’s very stupid for IBM executives to discuss this in official company emails even if I can relate to the feeling sometimes.
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Doesn’t the best employment model look a lot like sports teams? Instead of the company needing to fire you, you’re the one that needs to tryout and make the team each year. Seasonal jobs are already much like that.
Not in certain high tech industries. I remember a company I worked for about 15 years ago. The CEO wanted to make some financial metrics look better, so he decided to bring in a large number of contractors. It created not just anxiety but bad feelings with the rank-and-file: people realized the company didn’t look at them as assets to cultivate but as disposable elements. Next up cycle saw a mass exodus and eventually the CEO was fired (the BoD took pleasure making their decision public) and the company sold out.
My opinion…, yes, Amazon’s warehouses can and do apply that best model you talk about. In companies with niche technologies, you need to nurture people and cultivate a family-like atmosphere.
Halftime Horror!! 
imo
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I can’t say that teaching my 82 year old dad how to use a smartphone is a good example to contradict that statement. So it may be true as a generalization that older people aren’t as adept at new technology and ‘change agility’.
OTOH I know multiple engineers over 60 that could school 99% of the populice on any tech topic. I don’t think the 'old people can’t use computers ’ sterotype has any place in the tech industry.
There are also plenty of negative generalizations people can and do make about younger people : lazy, entitled, compulsive job hoppers, need praise and participation trophies all day long, still live in their parents basements, blame boomers for all their life failures, etc.
If you need any more examples just google ‘negative stereotype millenial’
Guess we should start systematically laying off people under 30 because we read these headlines in every newspaper consistently for the past 10 years. Just don’t write it down in emails that you actually think any of it.
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Like any generalizations, there are exceptions and some brilliant ones at that.
But at my company at least, the vast majority of folks having recurring issues with technology, having trouble with new software, needing tons of training for basic stuff like MS Teams, Slack, video conferencing, Tableau, Visio, or various electronic platforms are on the older side.
I wouldn’t systematically want to force everyone out once they hit 67 or 70 but it’s frustrating how much hand-holding and prodding you need for some specific individuals and how you need to be on your toes that you don’t frame your complaints about them in terms of age, rather than simply in terms of lacking required skills for the job.
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Younger may be more comfortable with new tech, but they are also often dazzled by all the newest innovations, while the older people are more focused on just getting the job done. There’s a happy medium in there, that’s rather independent of age. Those are the employees I’d want, regardless of their ages.
How much of what they struggle with is essential to their core job, and how much of it is tangent and only “required” because someone decided it was “better”? You mention Teams, Slack, etc - tools that your organization may have decided to make essential to how you operate, but really aren’t inherently essential to the job.
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So it’s okay for them to plot to illegally do something, as long as they don’t talk about it in recordable formats? Sheesh!
So, if the majority of folks having issues with business language, or working long hours were black (or red-headed), you would say it’s okay to get them out of the company, as long as you don’t discuss it in recordable formats?
So you think that does not happen in practice? They’re subpar performers that you always worry that if you fire them, you won’t want to open yourself to age discrimination lawsuits. We get trained by HR to not write anything along these lines. Ideally we’re not supposed to think in these terms but you cannot go against evidence and human nature either.
In a collaborative remote environment, communication tools are pretty fundamental. It’s as much part of the required skills as technical skills. At least as long as it impacts performance and company productivity.
Completely hypothetical and unlikely to happen in practice but why not. Inefficiencies need to be corrected wherever they happen. Statistical trends in where these inefficiencies happen should not factor in the decision to weed them out.
Bottom line, I think it’s wrong to generalize. The issue occurs more frequently with more senior folks but it’s still down to the individual and in communications should not be generalized and only framed in terms of individual performance.
P.S.: Disclaimer, I’m biased because I’m tired of dealing with a certain number of computer-inept people whom only common trend between them appears to be age and change-averse attitude. It’s just hard to not generalize when statistics point in one direction.
That’s a lot of buzzwords… 
I suspect those older folks are equally frustrated with their own struggles, like trying to figure out the whole video conferencing thing knowing that there is a perfectly functional and easy to use phone sitting right there next to them.
I think that the lines tend to get blurred between “essential” and “easier”. What some [mostly younger people] find to be easier and better gets adopted as being essential, when it’s really little more than a individual preference being forced onto others.
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I believe it was pointed out earlier that you are originally from the Soviet Union. Perhaps old worn out feelings and attitudes never change.
I’m not saying you’re wrong about working conditions upheld in some American businesses. But try a little kindness.
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Ok well good that you think its wrong. but you sure were acting as if its a fact that should be acted on…
But the problem here is that people get these ngative sterotypes and then act on them as if they are universal truths. Sometimes thats more direct and overt but sometimes its more a subtle influence or subconsious.
Quick question : WHo do you hire the young person or the old one? Maybe you dont’ hire the old one cause they’re so bad at tech like you’ve sadi a dozen times. … Now this is basically jsut age discrimination (intentional or not) in action.
Now try and apply this to a Tech company like IBM. People get this generalized idea that old people can’t do tech and then this influences their decisions on who to layoff.
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There are other reasons I’d hire younger people preferentially. Cheaper is one consideration. But also the typical learning curve to full productivity for the type of hires I’m looking at is several years almost regardless of prior experience. So I’d be reluctant to invest 3-5 years to bring up to speed someone in their 60s knowing they’ll likely be retiring soon anyway.
Down the line though, I’ll make the decision more on total skill set vs. cost. But I admit that age may be a tie breaker all things being equal otherwise even though it probably should not be.
P.S.: By the way by older, I mean 60+ usually. I don’t have the same issues with 40-55 yr olds GenX people usually.
I can see a bit of basis for his position. Those of us who code for a living will certainly have the ability to adapt to new systems without substantial difficulty (but there is the problem these days that companies want to hire people who already have experience with system X, the fact that their existing employee skilled in Y could learn X isn’t relevant–even if they learn X on their own they won’t have work experience with it and thus are deemed unqualified), but there’s also a matter of lifestyle.
If I were in the business of writing apps for 20-somethings I would prefer a 20-something programmer to someone like me (a 50-something programmer.) It’s a cultural issue, not a skill issue. (What actually matters for that is the user interface–it makes no difference who does the back end.)
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This isn’t a matter of age per se, but of losing mental flexibility. Back in college I was a lab assistant in one of the computer labs and there was a computer literacy for seniors class in there on occasion–I’d say 1/3 got it, did fine. 2/3 couldn’t adapt. My mother managed to learn to deal with computers to a reasonable degree despite depending entirely on screen-reader software–my father couldn’t even handle a word processor. I finally had to say “make no edits whatsoever”, I would clean up the obvious stuff, then print it out doublespaced for him to make edits with a pen. He was completely incapable of treating it differently than a typewriter.
There certainly are some that can’t handle change–but do it on a case-by-case basis, not as a blanket judgment of people who are older!
The way the market treats people these days you can’t really expect them to stick around for many years anyway. So long as the best way to raise your income is to change jobs don’t expect to keep them around for a long time.
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And thats part of the problem then. (not you personally but this kind of behavior)
Age is a tie breaker. So its also a factor otherwise. Its one of the things in your head when you’re deciding. Its part of the math.
And people know its illegal so if they are careful they make sure not to leave a paper trail admitting they think it. And if age is a tiebreaker because of stereotypes then a certain % of people on the margin lose their job just because of age.
There are other people though who aren’t really consious that this is discrimination or who don’t really admit or realize that generalizations and sterotypes are wrong. And some people who think that way make hiring/firing decisions. Those people would end up firing more older people because they aren’t even considering such stereotypes as wrong adn actively use it as a deciding factor but maybe HR tells them not to say it or write it down.
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